The Game of Hope
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
For Napoleon's stepdaughter, nothing is simple - especially love.
Paris, 1798. Hortense de Beauharnais is engrossed in her studies at a boarding school for aristocratic girls, most of whom have suffered tragic losses during the tumultuous days of the French Revolution. She loves to play and compose music, read and paint, and daydream about Christophe, her brother's dashing fellow officer. But Hortense is not an ordinary girl. Her beautiful, charming mother, Josephine, has married Napoleon Bonaparte, soon to become the most powerful man in France, but viewed by Hortense at the outset as a coarse, unworthy successor to her elegant father, who was guillotined during the Terror.
Where will Hortense's future lie? it may not be in her power to decide.
Inspired by Hortense's real-life autobiography with charming glimpses of life long ago, this is the story of a girl destined by fate to play a role she didn't choose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a historical novel set in 1798, Gulland (the Josephine B. series) follows the life of 15-year-old Hortense Beauharnais four years after the end of the French Revolution. Hortense is wrestling with nightmares about her father, who was guillotined during the Reign of Terror. She lives at the Institute, a boarding school for the aristocracy run by Ma tresse Campan, with her best friend, Mouse, and her older cousin Emilie. Hortense has mixed feelings about her mother's recent marriage to Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte, and she dreams of a romance with Christophe, her brother's fellow officer, who is with the military in Egypt. Numerous other characters filter in and out of the story, including Eliza, daughter of American ambassador James Monroe, and Hyacinthe Jadin, a young pianist and composer who inspires Hortense, but all of the characters are paper-thin. The story is divided into chapters named for a set of fortune-telling cards, but this does little to structure the meandering plot. Gulland's novel is meticulously packed with historical details, though, and these help to create a convincing portrayal of the suffocating and insecure circumstances that an aristocrat of the time might have experienced. Included are a glossary, a map, and additional historical information. Ages 12 up.
