Marvelous
A Novel of Wonder and Romance in the French Royal Court
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Enchanting. Molly Greeley has pulled off a piece of magic to tell a dazzling love story about the outcast's ache to be cared for and belong. This book broke my heart and put it back together again."--Allison Epstein, author of A Tip for the Hangman
A mesmerizing novel set in the French royal court of Catherine de’ Medici during the Renaissance, which recreates the touching and surprising true story behind the Beauty and the Beast legend, from the acclaimed author of The Clergyman’s Wife and The Heiress.
1547: Pedro Gonzales, a young boy living on the island of Tenerife, understands that he is different from the other children in his village. He is mercilessly ridiculed for the hair covering his body from head to toe. When he is kidnapped off the beach near his home, he finds himself delivered by a slave broker into the dangerous and glamorous world of France’s royal court. There “Monsieur Sauvage,” as he is known, learns French, literature, and sword fighting, becoming an attendant to the French King Henri II and a particular favorite of his queen, the formidable Catherine de’ Medici. Queen Catherine considers herself a collector of unusual people and is fascinated by Pedro…and determined to find him a bride.
Catherine Raffelin is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl whose merchant father has fallen on hard times and offers up his daughter to Queen Catherine. The queen will pay his debts, and his daughter will marry Monsieur Sauvage.
Catherine meets Pedro for the first time on their wedding day. Barely recovered from the shock of her father’s betrayal, she soon finds herself christened “Madame Sauvage” by the royal courtiers, and must learn to navigate this strange new world, and the unusual man who is now her husband.
Gorgeously written, heartbreaking and hopeful, Marvelous is the portrait of a marriage, the story of a remarkable, resilient family, and an unforgettable reimagining of one of the world’s most beloved fairy tales.
"A richly detailed and imaginative novel. Readers will relish Greeley's emotionally potent tale."--Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greeley (The Heiress) draws on a 16th-century episode that inspired "Beauty and the Beast" in her moving if overwrought latest. In Tenerife, a hairy baby boy is found abandoned at a church and taken in by a woman who has seen most of her family killed or captured by the Spanish conquerors. Given the name Pedro, he's subjected to other children's taunts and known as La Bestia. Later, he's abducted by pirates, sold at the market, and finally, at roughly 10 years old in 1547, taken to Blois. At the French court, Pedro studies French, Latin, Greek, and Italian, and his scholarship astonishes the courtiers and makes King Henri proud, thus securing Pedro a place at the court. Pedro's marriage in 1570 to Catherine, 17, is rocky at first, as she's forced into the union to clear her merchant father's debt and turned off by Pedro's appearance. Greeley nicely develops the gradual bond between Catherine and Pedro, which blossoms into unconditional love, though the story tends to drag and the writing is prosaic (faced with news described as wind that "whips like a storm," a character cannot "stopper his ears against it, cannot deny its stormy force"). Readers who enjoy retold fairy tales may want to take a look.
