Book Reviews
Definitely a contender for one of the best reads of the year.
Associated Press
A most impressive literary debut, this outstanding novel of the French Revolution is well worth reading.
Historical Novels Review (Editors' Choice)
Against the backdrop of the leadup to the French Revolution, Delors's mostly successful debut follows the life of Gabrielle de Montserrat, a feisty young woman forced by her meddling brother to forsake her commoner true love and marry the Baron de Peyre, a wealthy, older man. The baron is abusive and cruel, but the short-lived marriage produces a daughter before the baron dies. A widowed Gabrielle travels to Paris and enters the heady world of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, where, with a sparse inheritance and the responsibility of a young daughter, Gabrielle becomes the mistress of Count de Villers. Delors shines in her portrayal of the late 18th-century French women's world (she has a rougher time with the men), though the amount of political-historical detail covered overshadows the tragic love story that develops once Gabrielle reunites with her first love, Pierre-André Coffinhal, who is now a lawyer. The appearance of historical figures sometimes comes off awkwardly (as when Gabrielle meets Thomas Jefferson or has a private audience with Robespierre), and the ending is marred by a too-convenient and seemingly tossed-off twist. Nevertheless, the author ably captures the vagaries of French politics during turbulent times and creates a world inhabited by nicely developed and sympathetic characters.
Publishers Weekly
Delors does an admirable job of depicting the tension, confusion, and volatility of an era when one false move could mean the guillotine. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist
A noblewoman suffers several close brushes with the guillotine during the French Revolution in this debut novel from Delors. Gabrielle, from a noble family in Auvergne, sees her ancestral chateau for the first time at age 11, after she's removed from convent boarding school by her brother, the Marquis de Montserrat. Her mother, whom she hardly knows, is cold and hypercritical, and as Gabrielle matures, her brother makes incestuous overtures to her. While visiting her former wet nurse, a peasant woman, Gabrielle falls in love with Pierre-Andre, a young doctor. The Marquis forbids her to wed Pierre-Andre because he is a commoner. Instead, when she turns 15, her family forces her to marry middle-aged Baron de Peyre, who proves a volatile, brutal husband. When he dies suddenly, leaving Gabrielle a pittance, she flees with daughter Aimee to Paris, where she finds refuge with a distant cousin, a duchess who introduces her to the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Gabrielle becomes the mistress of the Count de Villers, who keeps her in grand style but often displays a cruel streak. When the Revolution begins, and Villers is killed defending the Tuileries Palace, Gabrielle is imprisoned, but acquitted by a peoples' court. Meanwhile, Pierre-Andre, now a lawyer, has become an influential magistrate under the new regime, and remains so throughout the various power shifts of the Revolution, while his contemporaries are losing their heads. Gabrielle seeks his help in procuring identity documents falsifying her aristocratic past, and the two rekindle their romance. Gabrielle is again arrested when her employer, whose advances she spurns, informs on her. Pierre-Andre secures her release and obtains his mentor Robespierre's blessings for the relationship. But a sudden reversal of Robespierre's political fortunes leaves Pierre-Andre and Gabrielle at the mob's mercy. Delors, who was born in France, writes competently in English, but at times her prose reads like a stilted translation. The Revolution's successive upheavals form an engrossing backdrop to Gabrielle's predicament, but she's too timid a protagonist to command center stage.
Kirkus Reviews