French literature does love its ghosts especially the ones that sell. After Dumas, resurrected by Sarkozy’s sentimental marketing stunt, Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre now takes it upon herself to dig up Milady de Winter and dress her in modern clothes. The result, however, is clumsy and misguided. “Je voulais vivre” promises a bold reimagining, a fresh take on one of Dumas’s most intriguing characters, but delivers only a stiff, overwrought pastiche a novel corseted by ambition it can’t possibly sustain.

In trying to compete with Dumas, Clermont-Tonnerre gets lost in her own ornate prose. What aims for brilliance feels merely heavy. Every line drips with forced literary references; every page bears the weight of self-conscious style. You can almost hear the rustle of period costumes, but there’s no energy, no wit, none of the effortless vitality that made Dumas irresistible.

And Milady? Dumas’s darkly fascinating femme fatale becomes, here, a glossy-paper heroine a kind of reheated feminist icon, somewhere between Nabilla Vergara and a luxury-brand influencer. In trying to give Milady a second life, Clermont-Tonnerre drains her of mystery, danger, and soul.

You close the book as you might leave an overlong party: dazzled for a moment by the sparkle, but bored by the lack of substance. The “modernity” feels cosmetic, the homage to Dumas, counterfeit. In trying to give Milady new breath, Clermont-Tonnerre only suffocates her trapped, as ever, within the confines of Paris’s 16th District.

FM