The Moon and the Sun

Versailles in 1693 is the most magnificent place on earth and one of the least comfortable, and Marie-Josèphe de la Croix has arrived there from a convent in Martinique to serve in the household of the King's niece. Her brother Yves is a Jesuit natural philosopher, returned from a voyage in triumph with a specimen no European has ever taken alive: a sea monster, captive in a basin in the gardens, to be dissected for the edification of the court and consumed by Louis XIV, who has been told its flesh confers immortality. Marie-Josèphe is set to sketch the creature and to make a fair copy of her brother's notes. Listening to it sing, she begins to understand that it is not an animal at all but a woman, with a language, a history and a name, and that everyone with the power to intervene has an excellent reason not to. McIntyre writes the court with tremendous relish, all etiquette, syphilis and gossip, and lets the horror accumulate quietly beneath it. The result is a historical novel of real density that turns on a simple and unanswerable question about who is permitted to count as a person.