The School of Mirrors
By Eva Stachniak
CW: child sexual assault
A generational saga and a meditation on motherhood.
Set in Pre-Revolution France, the novel unfolds adjacent to the glittering court of Versailles, the royal family, their courtiers and their servants all seen through the eyes of a poor young girl beautiful enough, and unlucky enough, to be groomed as a potential bedmate for the self-indulgent, all-powerful king. Details of her family life weave a grim tapestry of single parenthood and its endless striving to gain some slight advantage in life even if it means selling a child into prostitution.
Part two follows the unwitting offspring of that grooming process—one of many bastards sired on young girls by the aging king with the contrivance of his valet & his official mistress—as she grows up ignorant of her true parentage, passed from guardian to guardian in accordance with the payments and orders flowing from the palace. Through her years of training as a midwife we see the growing discontent of France’s burgeoning middle class and the seeds of revolution landing on fertile soil. What danger does her bastard royal blood present when the enemies of the king get the upper hand?
The novel is beautiful and disturbing, an angle on the French Revolution that is both intimate and panoramic. The language is polished, the details rich with texture. In this age of #MeToo, its grooming of young girls is a particularly disturbing element in a deeply compelling story.
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