The Queen of Tuesday

“A delight.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“The best book yet by one of our best writers.”—The Millions
 
“‘Half memoir and half make-believe,’ this boisterous novel relates an imagined affair between Lucille Ball . . . and the author’s grandfather. . . . A touching account of the sacrifices that Lucille makes to preserve her ‘most genuine’ relationship: the one ‘between her and the public.’”—The New Yorker
 
“An impossibly daring premise for a novel—an act of almost Lucy-level audaciousness! . . . exceptionally well told . . . [Darin] Strauss conjures up those heady days . . . with such vibrancy it’s impossible not to hope that everything might work out after all. . . . Brilliant.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
 
“As in Strauss’s other books, the movement here is perpetual and multidirectional; it never stops. . . . The author asserts himself, here as elsewhere in his books, through his rigorously playful approach to language. . . . [The Queen of Tuesday] reads like a dream painted in bold and fearsome strokes.”—The Boston Globe
 
“Timeless . . . Strauss’ ingenious and bittersweet fourth novel, The Queen of Tuesday, seems genuinely to lament a love affair that never happened. It’d be the perfect ’50s screen romance! But Strauss knows what time we’re living in.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“A rollicking read.”—Newsday

“Anything Darin Strauss writes is magic. I have been his fan since the beginning of time, and I will be his fan until the sun explodes.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
 
“A great read!”—Jenny Offill, author of Weather
 
“The Queen of Tuesday is a beautiful cinematic story. In a gorgeous imagined history of a not long ago world, the novelist Strauss allows us to remember our deeply held wishes to invent our lives and memories for our privately held loves. Like The Great Gatsby, Strauss reminds us here that ghosts unseen who remain deeply felt renew our heart’s most passionate yearnings and ambitions.”—Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko
 
“A home run!”—Gary Shteyngart, author of Lake Success
 
“Darin Strauss has resurrected a lost world—the grand movie that never aired, the truncated epic of what might have been between Lucille Ball and his grandfather. Part elegy, part mystery, part speculative memoir, here is a love story unlike any you’ve read before—spiked with Hollywood scandal and the secrets families keep across generations. Strauss is a beautiful and funny and piercing writer, and this book is a gift.”—Karen Russell, author of Orange World and Other Stories
 
“Wonderful!”—Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less