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The Red Necklace

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The Red Necklace

By: Sally Gardner
Narrated by: Janet Suzman
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Summary

 The story of a remarkable boy called Yann Margoza; Tetu the dwarf, his friend and mentor; Sido, unloved daughter of a foolish Marquis; and Count Kalliovski, Grand Master of a secret society, who has half the aristocracy in thrall to him, and wants Yann dead.

Yann is spirited away to London but three years later, when Paris is gripped by the bloody horrors of the Revolution, he returns, charged with two missions: to find out Kalliovski's darkest deeds and to save Sido from the guillotine.

With a tangle of secrets, a thread of magic and a touch of humour, the follies of the aristocracy and the sufferings of ordinary people are unfolded as their lives move relentlessly towards the tragic and horrific days of the Terror. THE RED NECKLACE is not only a tremendous adventure story but a vibrant and passionate picture of Paris in turmoil and of a large cast of memorable characters.

Read by Janet Suzman
(P)2004 Orion Publishing Group.Ltd©2007 Sally Gardner Fiction Historical Fiction Literature & Fiction Mystery & Suspense Science Fiction & Fantasy Thrillers & Suspense Fantasy French Revolution
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Critic reviews

A gripping read
A tense and believable fantasy
Enthralling
A tremendous adventure story told at breathtaking pace
Sophisticated, unpatronising ... extremely rewarding
Told with relentless pace
One word to describe The Red Necklace: Fantastic! (Alexandra Dignan, Aged 12)
A truly original voice ... a thrilling read
A rattling good story
Peopled with thrilling characters and gorgeously suspenseful
[A] compelling marriage of magic and history
A new star in historical children's fiction
A splendid story
Exciting and enthralling
Enthrallingly told, it offers action, surprise and protagonists to care about
All stars
Most relevant
Once again, Sally Gardner returns to the French Revolution — this time not as a historical rupture but as a backdrop for a romanticised, moralised fantasy aimed squarely at a niche of older women haunted by the proximity of death and drawn to narratives of moral redemption. Though well written and neatly structured around the enigmatic Count Calliovsky, the novel exudes a fundamentally conservative worldview. The French Revolution is condemned for its bloodshed, with no real understanding of the material stakes of an uprising — or of the structural, systemic necropolitics it tried to undo.

The stupidity of the nobility is paradoxically redeemed through the wit and so-called purity of women, whose moral clarity is meant to shine through the fog of masculine decay. Men, in Gardner’s world, are either useless or adrift in their own privilege — but this critique never fully lands, because masculinity itself becomes a source of fascination. It’s not men she despises, but the wrong kind of men. Violence, officially condemned, is quietly eroticised: transformed into bullying, perversion, and the intoxicating energy that Gardner can’t help but be drawn to.

This is the central contradiction of the book: it moralises what it fetishizes. The very dynamics it wants to critique — domination, bloodlines, hereditary power — are precisely what fuel its narrative pleasure. Then there is the romanticised figure of the Gypsy, the peripheral outsider who becomes a vessel of ancient wisdom and alternative knowledge. But this gesture, too, raises questions: is there room in Gardner’s moral universe for true transformation from within, or must all change come from mystified alterity — the exotic, the impure, the displaced?

Sally Gardner and Her Peculiar French Revolution

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If you can cope with your lead character (a fourteen year old gypsy boy, brought up by a polyglot, romany dwarf) reading peoples' minds, seeing the future and talking to animals so that they do his bidding, this books is for you. Three hours into it, I realise I should write off one audible credit and stop wasting my life. I'm afraid that Salmon Rushdie made magic and clairvoyance respectable in adult literature, but I can't take it, and this author can't do it.

For kids

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