A surprising and heartbreaking read

What a fabulous way to be thrust into the mid-nineteenth century in such an enveloping way. Celeste de Chabrillan is one of the most complex and unique personages of the Victorian era, and the memoirs of her time between Melbourne and France are compellingly honest and give enormous insight into a woman's world.
She is brutally frank about everything - her racism, her marriage, her infamous experience as a Parisian courtesan, her mother, as well as modest about her strengths, kindnesses and stoicism. The tragic course of the final chapters gives the 21st century reader a view of how heartbreakingly large and frightening the world was at that time and how tenuous and uncertain life was. Yet despite it all, people achieved all sorts of feats and lived and thrived. This diary tells more than the tale of one French woman's 5 year period. It tells us the common story of our ancestors, and reveals our own luck at being alive in this age of comforts and miracles.