“This original and significant work provides a wonderful reading of French novelist Honoré de Balzac. . . . Lucey’s Misfit of the Family will change the way we read not only French realism but also the construction of intimacy and privacy in the making of Western modernist aesthetics.” — Catherine Nesci , Modern Philology
"The Misfit of the Family highlights the rich history and sociology that literature can provide in our discussions about sexualities and the social forms they take." — Carla Freccero, GLQ
"[A] significant contribution not only to the study of the representation of sexuality in Balzac but also to work on the dynamic interrelation between hegemonic and non-hegemonic (if still subaltern) sexual cultures." — Owen Heathcote , Modern and Contemporary France
"[A]n urgent and compelling argument which is exceptionally well versed in Balzacian criticism. . . ." — Nicholas White , Journal of European Studies
"It is difficult not to be impressed with this study, both in its breadth and in its patient examination of a heretofore much neglected component of Balzac's oeuvre, that of the portrayal of same-sex relations in La Comédie humaine. . . . In opening our eyes to the historical contingencies of same-sex relations in Balzac's opus, Michael Lucey succeeds in bringing the constituent works to life, and in so doing has made a significant contribution to both Queer studies and the domain of Balzac criticism." — Scott Lee, Dalhousie French Studies
"Michael Lucey's The Misfit of the Family is one of those wonderful books to come along now and then that give us a fresh new perspective on texts long known and deeply studied. . . . A reading of this book will open new doors to understanding Balzac's complex social universe." — Dorothy Kelly , Nineteenth-Century French Studies
"The historical scholarship seems impeccable. . . . [T]he volume includes many interesting insights and implicitly suggests the need for further study of the Balzacian theme of sexuality in all its forms." — A.H. Pasco, Choice
“Michael Lucey’s Balzac is not the Balzac they taught you in college, or even in graduate school. His resourceful readings introduce us to a social universe to which oddballs and misfits are entirely germane because queerness is its norm. Now I understand why Proust so loved Balzac and what Baudelaire learned from him: that the bizarreness of beauty offers a clue to the form of heroism that is truly characteristic of the modern age.” — Ross Chambers, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan
"Michael Lucey's fine literary analysis, rigorous theorization of sexualities, attention to culture as a contested field, and nuanced historiographical reconstructions show how Balzac’s Comédie humaine, long viewed as the domain of social climbers thrusting aside residual forms of sociabilities, in fact offers a panorama of ‘misfits’ negotiating the instabilities and faultlines of the family as it is being reinvented in post-Revolutionary France. Lucey's compelling reflection on how literature is emmeshed with the historical construction of private life reveals queer paradigms as central to a genealogy of French modernity." — Margaret Cohen, New York University
“The Misfit of the Family is an impressive fruition of theory precisely mobilized to decipher as never before the remarkable flowering of queer sexualities in Balzac’s epochal œuvre. We come to see why sexuality is so often liminal, marking as it does those crucial points where one form of capital wants conversion into another. Readers of this remarkable book will not be able to ignore the astonishing machinery of queer sexuality in the formative decades of our modernity.” — James Creech, Miami University
“Michael Lucey’s Balzac is not the Balzac they taught you in college, or even in graduate school. His resourceful readings introduce us to a social universe to which oddballs and misfits are entirely germane because queerness is its norm. Now I understand why Proust so loved Balzac and what Baudelaire learned from him: that the bizarreness of beauty offers a clue to the form of heroism that is truly characteristic of the modern age.” — Ross Chambers, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan
"Michael Lucey's fine literary analysis, rigorous theorization of sexualities, attention to culture as a contested field, and nuanced historiographical reconstructions show how Balzac’s Comédie humaine, long viewed as the domain of social climbers thrusting aside residual forms of sociabilities, in fact offers a panorama of ‘misfits’ negotiating the instabilities and faultlines of the family as it is being reinvented in post-Revolutionary France. Lucey's compelling reflection on how literature is emmeshed with the historical construction of private life reveals queer paradigms as central to a genealogy of French modernity." — Margaret Cohen, New York University
“The Misfit of the Family is an impressive fruition of theory precisely mobilized to decipher as never before the remarkable flowering of queer sexualities in Balzac’s epochal œuvre. We come to see why sexuality is so often liminal, marking as it does those crucial points where one form of capital wants conversion into another. Readers of this remarkable book will not be able to ignore the astonishing machinery of queer sexuality in the formative decades of our modernity.” — James Creech, Miami University