Goddess

THE DIVINE CREATURE who plummets "from the painted clouds" to center stage in Kelly Gardiner's gender-bending picaresque, "Goddess," is based on an actual historical character. Julie d'Aubigny, a.k.a. Mademoiselle de Maupin, a.k.a. La Travesti, grew up in Versailles on the periphery of Louis XIV's court, where her father served as secretary to the Sun King's master of horse. Papa d'Aubigny taught the court pages - and his daughter, who from childhood on dressed "as a chevalier who happened to be born female" - to fence; and Julie became an expert swordsman and equestrian, a seductress of both women and men, a tavern brawler and itinerant singer, and improbably - but what is not improbable in this narrative? - an operatic superstar at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris. She died in a convent in 1707 at the age of 33. "Goddess," Gardiner tells us in her author's note, is an interpretation of La Maupin's life, framed as a deathbed confession and divided into acts and scenes in which first-person "recitative" alternates with third-person duets, divertissements, ensembles, ballets and minuets, as if it were a tragédie en musique by the protagonist's great contemporary, Jean-Baptiste Lully. It is in his "Cadmus et Hermione" that La Maupin makes her spectacular debut, floating down from the heights of the Palais-Royale to such pandemonium, such earsplitting acclaim, that "the orchestra stops playing. There's no point." In that moment, in one of the book's many glittering set pieces, Julie "waits. Regal. ... She feels the paint on her face melting, pain where the armor has blistered her skin, fear in her bowels, the old scars, the bruises, the despair. She breathes the black smoke of the tallow candles, the stench of sweat ... and unwashed costumes. She watches it all, feels it all, breathes it all in and spits it out as a song. Again those glorious, warm tones fill the air. ... She flies across the stage and everyone in the place is on their feet - even the people with seats." Such scenes sparkle with period details and sensory impressions: all spectacle and shimmer, all gesture and pose, Baroque mask and mirror and role-play. Gardiner does this very well. And her goddess fascinates. No sex-change operations for her. She doesn't leap from one side of the gender binary to the other but remains, like the goddess she so often invokes, Pallas Athena, in ambiguous androgyny (albeit a considerably juicier, more oversexed androgyny than Athena's). To the priest who's hearing her confession, Julie says: "I dressed not as a man, not as a woman - just as myself. ... I wore the clothes and the sword of a gentleman, but I wore them as a woman. I never let anyone forget who I truly was - am- I am my own greatest creation. La Maupin." Who can doubt her? Who can resist her sheer bravado? But the question is: Can bravado without depth sustain a 378-page narrative? Surface without introspection palls. So too, does action without character development. (So too, it must be said, does the endless Romantic self-analysis of Théophile Gautier's celebrated 19th-century take on Mademoiselle de Maupin. But that's another story.) In "Goddess," the protagonist is always developing her act, always studying how to present herself. And always vaunting that self. The episodes in her life succeed one another like so many beads on a string. Each romp, duel, passion, role, year yields to the next, and the reader is left to yearn, unrequitedly, for some point of entry into La Maupin's inner life and the deeper meaning of her remarkable story. NANCY KLINE'S most recent book is a translation, with Mary Ann Caws, of "Earth Absolute and Other Texts," by Lorand Gaspar.

YA author Gardiner makes her adult fiction debut with a humdinger of a subject: Julie d'Aubigny (1673-1707), the sword-wielding, cross-dressing, bisexual opera star of 17th-century France. Raised in the stables of Louis XIV, d'Aubigny escapes poverty and abuse by attaching herself to a variety of lovers, from the King's Master of Horse to her fencing instructor to the daughter of a nobleman. She hurtles from one adventure to another until she lands in a convent at age 33, reflecting on her life to a priest who has come to give her final absolution. While Gardiner's historical research is impressive, the characterization of d'Aubigny as a consummate actor oddly keeps the reader at a distance. She successfully reinvented herself multiple times and was driven by passion, but the deathbed confessional device makes the telling of her story seem more performative than revealing. VERDICT With her transgressive actions and devil-may-care attitude, d'Aubigny's life seems almost tailor-made for fans of historical fiction.-Liza Oldham, Beverly, MA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.