Exclusive interview with novelist Michelle Moran and a review of her book about Madame Tussaud and her struggle to survive the French Revolution
Reviewed by Gabrielle Pantera • Rating: Four Stars
“My interest in Marie Tussaud began on my very first trip to London,” says Madam Tussaud author Michelle Moran. “Like thousands of tourists before me, I’d decided I wanted to visit the famous wax museum Madame Tussauds. At the time, I knew almost nothing about the woman behind the name, but as I passed through the exhibition, I began to piece together what would ultimately prove to be a fascinating story.”
Michelle Moran’s fourth book is set during the French Revolution. Moran blends the horrors of the revolution, Marie’s work obsession, a romance, and her family loyalty to deliver a compelling story. Moran makes Marie Antoinette and the Royal family real and multi-dimensional. There’s the storming of the Bastille and Robespierre’s obsession with those who have betrayed him. There are graphic descriptions of horrors of the time.
This story of Madame Marie Tussaud starts just before the French revolution. Tussaud and her family consider themselves survivalists. They work both sides of the revolution to survive the war. Will Marie survive or will her wax figures be her only legacy?
Moran noticed changes in the style of Tussaud’s art as the artist’s situation changed.
“In the first wax tableau I came across, Marie Tussaud had modeled Queen Marie Antoinette with her husband and children,” says Moran. “They looked young and happy, dressed in lavish court gowns and silk culottes. In another tableau, the mistress of King Louis XV lay sprawled on a couch, her blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders. Clearly, Marie Tussaud had been interested in modeling the celebrities of her day. Some she would have sculpted from memory, while many she would have met and modeled in person. Marie’s art had obviously gained her access to some of the highest circles in French society.”
“But in a third tableau, a different part of Marie Tussaud’s life emerged,” says Moran. “Dressed in a black gown and dirtied apron, a young Marie could be seen holding up a lantern in the Madeleine Cemetery. The Revolution had begun, and she was searching through a pile of severed heads, all victims of Madame Guillotine. Immediately, I wanted to know what she was doing in that cemetery. Whose heads were they, and did she know those people? When I learned what Marie Tussaud went through during the French Revolution, who she’d met, where she’d gone, and what she’d seen, I knew I would someday tell her story.”
Moran began her research with a trip to France where nearly all of the novel takes place. “Once there, I tried to visit the locations Madame Tussaud herself would have seen. Some, such as the Bastille, no longer exist, but there are others, Versailles being the sublime example, where a great deal of 18th Century life has been preserved.”
After her trip, Moran did as much research as she could in libraries. “Finally, anything I couldn’t find in books I tried to discover through email conversations with some very generous French historians.”
Moran is currently working on her fifth book, Empress Josephine’s Crown, about the women who surrounded Napoleon Bonaparte. It focuses on Napoleon’s second wife, Marie-Louise, who came from Austria at eighteen years old.
Moran lives in San Francisco. She was born in the San Fernando Valley.
Madam Tussaud by Michelle Moran. Hardback, 464 pages, Publisher: Crown (February 15, 2011), Language: English. ISBN: 9780307588654 $25.00
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