![]() Lofts does a good job with the other characters as well. She can laugh at herself, and she has a rare gift for facing facts. As the narrator, she frankly admits that she lacks her mother’s easy charm, and she can be stubborn, especially when her estranged husband, Louis, is concerned. Hortense is an appealing heroine, resilient, un-self-pitying, and resourceful without ever becoming that dreaded creature of historical fiction, the Mary Sue. ![]() It has one of the most jaw-breaking subtitles I’ve seen in modern fiction: “The Very Private Life of Hortense, Stepdaughter of Napoleon I, mother of Napoleon III.” ![]() trilogy.Ī Rose for Virtue (named for a school prize that gets destroyed inadvertently when Hortense wears it) follows Hortense from the time of her mother and stepfather’s marriage to Hortense’s departure from Paris following Napoleon’s final downfall. I’ve been rather interested in Josephine and her circle ever since I read Sandra Gulland’s Josephine B. ![]() I hadn’t heard of this novel before, so I was delighted to pick it up and find that it was about Hortense, daughter of Josephine Bonaparte and stepdaughter (and sister-in-law) to Napoleon. Over the New Year’s weekend, I went into a used bookstore on the coast and spotted A Rose for Virtue, a 1971 historical novel by Norah Lofts, waiting patiently on the shelf. ![]()
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