The Queen's Lover [NOOK Book]

( 14 )

Overview

A “deeply intelligent” and “spellbinding” historical novel of Marie Antoinette on the eve of the French Revolution (The Washington Post)

Francine du Plessix Gray’s beautifully realized historical novel reveals the untold love story between Swedish aristocrat Count Axel von Fersen and Marie Antoinette. The romance begins at a masquerade ball in Paris in 1774, when the dashing nobleman first meets the mesmerizing nineteen-year-old dauphine, wife...
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The Queen's Lover

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More About This Book

Overview

A “deeply intelligent” and “spellbinding” historical novel of Marie Antoinette on the eve of the French Revolution (The Washington Post)

Francine du Plessix Gray’s beautifully realized historical novel reveals the untold love story between Swedish aristocrat Count Axel von Fersen and Marie Antoinette. The romance begins at a masquerade ball in Paris in 1774, when the dashing nobleman first meets the mesmerizing nineteen-year-old dauphine, wife of the reclusive prince who will soon become Louis XVI. This electric encounter launches a love affair that will span the course of the French Revolution.

As their relationship deepens, Fersen becomes a devoted companion to the entire royal family. Roaming the halls of Versailles and visiting the private haven of Le Petit Trianon, he discovers the deepest secrets of the court, even learning the startling erotic details of Marie Antoinette’s marriage to Louis XVI. But his new intimacy with Marie Antoinette and her family is disrupted when the events of the American Revolution tear Fersen away. Moved by the cause, he joins French troops in the fight for American independence.

He returns to find France on the brink of disintegration. After the Revolution of 1789 the royal family is moved from Versailles to the Tuileries. Fersen devises an escape for the family and their young children (Marie-Thérèse and the dauphin—whom many suspect is in fact Fersen’s son). The failed attempt leads to a more grueling imprisonment, and the family spends its excruciating final days captive before the king and queen face the guillotine.

Grieving his lost love in his native Sweden, Fersen begins to sense the effects of the French Revolution in his homeland. Royalists are now targets, and the sensuous aristocratic world of his youth is fast vanishing. Fersen is incapable of realizing that centuries of tradition have disappeared, and he pays dearly for his naïveté, losing his life at the hands of a savage mob that views him as a pivotal member of the ruling class.

Scion of Sweden’s most esteemed nobility, Fersen came to be seen as an enemy of the country he loved. His fate is symbolic of the violent speed with which the events of the eighteenth century transformed European culture. Expertly researched and deeply imagined, The Queen’s Lover is a fresh vision of the French Revolution and the French royal family as told through the love story that was at its center.
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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
This queen is Marie Antoinette, and her lover is Swedish nobleman Count Axel von Fersen. The rigorous and penetrating du Plessix Gray should do for Louis XVI's France what Hillary Mantel did for Henry VIII's England in Wolf Hall, that is, make real art, distinctively her own, of an already fascinating time, place, and cast of characters.
Kirkus Reviews
Du Plessix Gray attempts to fictionalize the love of Marie Antoinette's life, without much success. Axel von Fersen, a Swedish count, first meets the young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette, recently wed to the future king of France, at the Paris Opera. The handsome courtier and the graceful, sensitive dauphine instantly form a lifelong bond. Fersen, a diplomat and soldier, embarks with Lafayette's armies to aid the American colonists in their revolutionary war, and his letters to his beloved sister Sophie detail these adventures. But eventually Fersen, after an exhausting grand tour in the service of Sweden's flamboyant King Gustavus, reunites with Antoinette. The queen's marriage, celibate for years due to a minor sexual dysfunction, is finally consummated and Antoinette is now a mother. As Louis XVI occupies himself with hunting and gluttony, Antoinette and Fersen tryst at her private lodge, Le Petit Trianon, and in secret quarters in the palace of Versailles. Soon, the revolt of the French populace ends this idyll. Fersen attempts to help the king and queen flee the revolution by smuggling the royal family out of Paris. Unfortunately, their escape is aborted, thanks in large part to the naiveté of Louis and the tardiness of Antoinette. As Fersen takes refuge in Belgium, the king and queen are held in progressively more restrictive settings until they are condemned to die. Although this is an absorbing and vivid exposé of the many missteps that led to the downfall of Louis and a sympathetic portrayal of the young queen and her noble endurance of the sadistic treatment that preceded her execution, it is not a novel. The narration, shared by Sophie and Fersen, hews too slavishly to events documented by contemporaneous accounts. All is summary; there are virtually no scenes imagining the characters' lives; they never transcend their historically verifiable roles. Not even the last section, a grim recitation of Sweden's own anti-royalist upheavals (leading to Fersen's slaughter by an angry mob), realizes its dramatic potential. An accurate but lifeless retelling.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781101572320
  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
  • Publication date: 6/14/2012
  • Sold by: Penguin Group
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 304
  • Sales rank: 20,454
  • File size: 769 KB

Meet the Author

FRANCINE DU PLESSIX GRAY is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Simone Weil, At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life, Rage and Fire, Lovers and Tyrants, and Soviet Women. She is most recently the author of the memoir Them: A Memoir of Parents. She lives in Connecticut.

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3
( 14 )
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Sort by: Showing all of 14 Customer Reviews

  • Posted July 16, 2012

    Disappointing

    I picked this book up based on a review I'd read on NPR Books. This book was not what I envisioned at all. I was expecting a lively piece of historical fiction with deep character development. Instead the history of Marie Antoinette is told through the eyes of her lover and his sister. It was very boring and dry. I've found several non-fiction pieces more interesting!

    5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted January 4, 2013

    Check out the full review at Kritters Ramblings An interesti

    Check out the full review at Kritters Ramblings




    An interesting take on life behind the scenes in the palace of Louise XVI and Marie Antoinette.  As a reader that limits her historical fiction intake, the "story" must grab me to make me forget that it takes place beyond our current times.  From the summary, I was intrigued by the look at the French side of history, as I often read about the English kings.  The addition of an affair and Marie Antoinette's obvious fame were definitely points to pull me in.

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 9, 2012

    Not an easy read...

    I was excited to read this book, but it did not live up to my expectations...

    3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 25, 2012

    Interesting historical read

    This is a historical novel. Knowing that, i found this to be an interesting book about the relatively unknown relationship of Marie Antoinette and her Swedish lover. It was a different perspective on what transpired before, during, and after the French revolution.

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 30, 2012

    I very much enjoyed this book. It was a beautifully written love

    I very much enjoyed this book. It was a beautifully written love story.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 19, 2012

    Not too sure about this one.

    Different kind of book. Interesting portions, slow reading, did make me think who Marie Antoinette really was....

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 26, 2012

    Very interesting

    So far this story is not only informal but it adds a bit of interest with the main characters input on the way of life back in that era!

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 6, 2012

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    Posted January 4, 2013

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    Posted June 17, 2012

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    Posted January 25, 2013

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    Posted June 14, 2012

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    Posted May 21, 2012

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    Posted December 26, 2012

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