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With a nice and very accessible writing style, we go through 'The Journey' more like through a novel than an historical biography; making for a quick and pleasing read. The fact the author deals straightforwardly with Marie-Antoinette as a woman and a mother above all, beyond the historical and well-known character, also allows for an original outlook helping to sympathise with her.

Simple pawn on the geopolitical chessboard of the times, married at 15 and against all expectations just so as to seal a weak alliance between Habsbourg and Bourbons, sent over like a parcel in a foreign country despising hers and, later victim of hideous propaganda, political games of the Terror and a disgusting trial, there is indeed more than one reason to have pity for her! And, sure enough, Antonia Fraser doesn't hesitate to assail reader's sensitivity with a wealth of pathos and cheesy emotions spilling all over, until overflowing to the extreme in the last chapters!

Here's in fact the problem: refusing to take some distance with her subject by having a clear (and well asserted!) bias surely makes Marie-Antoinette more accessible and human, but such dismissal of the cold analysis expected from an historian also carries the risk of losing some objectivity. The Necklace Affair (in which she was without a shadow of a doubt an innocent victim, let's be fair) is for example dealt with in great details whereas, on the contrary, other aspects more controversial of her personality are gently brushed under the carpet (e.g. what about her influence upon Louis XVI and the choice of his ministers?). Without being completely apologetic (the excesses of 'Madame Deficit' and her court are widely recognised) that all along the book private matters like her relationship with Fersen get more attention than political ones is indeed problematic; and such a lack of balance is frankly disappointing.

Disappointing because, despite it all, Antonia Fraser clearly knows her topic in depth, knows how to convey her passion for the era and, if one can regret the over-sentimental clichés, her work remains well documented, referenced, without any argument put forward without evidence. In a word, it still is a serious book.

A good read, but damn it! Keep some tissues at hand!