A Sitting in St. James by Rita Williams-Garcia

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Sitting in St. James by Rita Williams-Garcia Elizabeth Bush Williams-Garcia, Rita A Sitting in St. James. Quill Tree/HarperCollins, 2021 [480p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780062367297 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780062367327 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 10 up Madame Sylvie Bernardin de Maret Dacier Guilbert, having escaped with her life from revolutions in France and Saint-Domingue, intends to spend her remaining days in quiet contentment on the Louisiana sugar cane plantation she and her late husband established. To indulge her childhood memories of rubbing elbows with French royalty and to endow her grandson, Byron, with her fortune are, she feels, deserved reward for surviving a coerced marriage, the loss of a beloved daughter, the disappointment of a wastrel son, and lifelong exile amid American hoi polloi. If the opening focus on the three generations of white Guilberts suggests a quaint or, worse, cringeworthy trip to Tara or Downton Abbey, it quickly becomes clear that Williams-Garcia is chessmaster of a deviously intricate game; Madame Sylvie may make the boldest moves, but it’s her hobbled pawn, the near-silent servant Thisbe, who listens, observes, learns, and amasses the knowledge to strike the queen with a coup de grâce. The players are deeply researched (as attested in comprehensive closing notes) but more important for their roles than character development: syphilitic has-been son Lucien, the embodiment of corruption; mannish naif Jane, the girl who wins the heart of Byron’s reluctant fiancée; gay grandson Byron, who refuses his procreative duty and thus dooms Madame’s mini-dynasty; French portrait artist Claude Le Brun, who exposes Madame’s sham aristocratic heritage and arranges Thisbe’s ticket to freedom on his way out the door. There’s a lot of traumatic intensity and sexual assault amid the gamesmanship, so there’s appropriate impact as well as intrigue. Williams-Garcia sets the Guilberts’ last stand (a devastating debacle of engagement party/portrait unveiling/marriage brokering) an eye-blink before imminent civil war. The irony could hardly be sweeter. [End Page 405] Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois