The Good Doctor Guillotin - Softcover

Estrin, Marc

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932961852 ISBN 13: 9781932961850

Publisher: Unbridled Books, 2009

Synopsis

The Good Doctor Guillotin follows five characters to a common destination the scaffold at the first guillotining of the French Revolution:

Dr. Guillotin, of course, a physician and member of the National Assembly, involved in many important events, including the Tennis Court Oath. Nicolas Pelletier, the first victim or patient,” as they were sometimes called, since the new beheading machine was seen as a humanitarian medical intervention in the state’s technique of dealing death.

Father Pierre, the curé who accompanies Pelletier in his last days, a man torn between his religious commitment, and an equally strong commitment to the poor and their revolution.

Sanson, the famous executioner of Paris who, 9 months later would execute the king and retire from remorse.

Tobias Schmidt, builder of the new machine, a German piano maker working in Paris, a freethinker predicting the Terror that will follow, but allowing himself to initiate it. The revolution, after all, had reduced the sale of pianos.

Various other interesting figures briefly appear:

Damiens, Mozart, Mesmer, Louis XVI, the Marquis de Sade, Marat, Robespierre, Demoulins among them. The eighteenth century narrative is divided into several sections, each introduced by an essay in the author’s voice, the first on five-ness and Pentagons; a second on hope and Utopia; a third on revolutionary violence; and a fourth on capital punishment.

This is no historical novel.” It is, rather, a fictive meditation on a contemporary conundrum using an eighteenth century drum.

About this title

About the Author:

Estrin is a writer, cellist, and activist living in Burlington, Vermont. The Good Doctor Guillotin is his ninth published book.

From Publishers Weekly:

Using a hybrid of fiction and political commentary, Estrin recounts the events leading up to the construction of France's first guillotine in this heavy-handed and slow-moving book. The story centers on a doctor, Guillotin, a member of the 1780s National Assembly, who argues for a more humane method of execution. Other important players are Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, the first man to lose his head to the new device; Tobias Schmidt, the piano maker who built the new painless device; Charles-Henri Sanson, an executioner; and Pierre-René Grevier, Pelletier's spiritual adviser. Mozart, the Marquis de Sade and, of course, Louis XVI make appearances, with the latter suggesting a modification to the very blade that would end his life only a short time later. Though Estrin evokes revolutionary and pre-revolutionary France, and Dr. Guillotin becomes real through his political tirades, the other characters remain static. Most troublesome, though, is Estrin's intrusion into the narrative to deliver his case against the death penalty (it reads like something from a freshman civics class). The project, overall, has potential, but the execution is botched. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Unbridled Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1932961852
• ISBN 13: 9781932961850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336