Called to Versailles to serve as wax tutor to the king’s sister, the devout Princesse Elisabeth, Marie is plunged into the magical world of royalty, where the queen never wears the same gown twice, where candles - used or not - are replaced daily, and the monarchy remains oblivious to the growing roar of a public enraged by lack of bread and an unresponsive king. What she cannot anticipate is her own emotional investment in the drama that will define her life and her place in history, and it is this profound journey that Moran so beautifully captures.

As astute in business as she is talented, Marie intuits opportunity in the changing political landscape, new scenes and personalities to frame the language of revolution.

Customers flock to the Salon to walk where the queen has walked, to view precise replicas of a queen’s boudoir, Swiss philosopher Rousseau at his desk, the salon a temporary palliative to the hunger rumbling in their bellies. Marie creates the lifelike faces of the figures displayed in tableau in the salon in pre-Revolutionary Paris, her latest coup a visit by Louis XVI and his Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette. Moran’s Madame Tussaud is an unexpected revelation, the French Revolution experienced through wax artist Marie Groshaltz, a student of her uncle Philippe Curtius at the Salon de Cire. Book review: Michelle Moran's *Madame Tussaud*

Madame tussaud by michelle moran