A Washington Post 2012 Notable Work of Fiction "
Deeply intelligent...spellbinding... If you liked Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette or Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall -- if you admired Gabriel Garcia Marquez's close lens in The General in His Labyrinth -- you will be richly rewarded by du Plessix Gray's amalgam of history and drama. Read it for its insights on Versailles; read it for its eye-opening glimpses into an equally venal Stockholm. But read it, when all is said and done, for its heartbreakingly wistful romance."--Marie Arana,
The Washington Post "The voice of history rises up out of the pages of [this] persuasive new novel. [A]
lively, incredibly readable, definitely R-rated version of the life and death of Marie Antoinette." - Alan Cheuse,
NPR "Ms. Gray has created fully developed, flawed and complex characters in a way that would probably not have been possible within the confines of biography.
[She] conjures up a world she knows well, in riveting detail. [The Queen's Lover is] a feat of research and imagination."--Moira Hodgson,
The Wall Street Journal "Don't remember anything about the French Revolution from high school? This is one of those books where you'll learn - or relearn - history effortlessly, as du Plessix Gray spins the affair of Marie Antoinette and a Swedish count into
riveting drama." -
Entertainment Weekly "[A] triumph of scholarship and storytelling... a remarkable book."--
Daily Beast "Set against the backdrop of royal opulence and revolution, du Plessix Gray's richly detailed chronicle of love and loss provides startling insight into the complex and tragic inner life of the iconic and controversial French queen Marie Antoinette."
--Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War "The story of the strange, then sad, then finally tragic life of Marie Antoinette has been told many times, but never with more humane feeling and historical point than Francine du Plessix Gray does in her new novel. Seen from the startling point of view of the Queen's Swedish lover, Count Axel von Fersen,
The Queen's Lover makes a familiar story newly poignant, and, without ever being pedantic, places that story in a broader context of European politics, too often missed."
--Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon "
The Queen's Lover is a thrilling book. It has everything--suspense, intrigue, love, luxury, tragedy, and romantic and familial love. It tells a familiar story from a new point of view."
--Edmund White, author of Jack Holmes and His Friend "In
The Queen's Lover, Francine du Plessix Gray brings her peerless narrative gifts to bear on one of history's all-time greatest love stories: the secret romance between Marie Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen. Set against the backdrop of the French monarchy's cataclysmic fall, the affair between the doomed queen and the dashing Swede is at once an achingly tender tale of two lovers and a tragic story of unspeakably brutal, broad-based societal change. With a historian's eye for evocative contextual detail and a novelist's ear for the lyricism of 'le grand amour, ' Gray weaves an unforgettable portrait of a couple whose lives were transfigured by love . . . and shattered by revolution."
--Caroline Weber, author of Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution