Her 2002 book, Farewell, My Queen, won the Prix Femina and was adapted into a 2012 film starring Diane Kruger and Léa Seydoux.

Her life has included teaching jobs at American and French universities (such as Yale and Princeton) as well as a publishing career.

She has published nineteen works, including essays on the Marquis de Sade, Casanova, and Marie Antoinette.

[5][6] Helen Falconer of The Guardian called the work "a well written slice of history" with "evocative, observant prose," but criticized it for creating a narrator who "merely provides us with a pair of eyes to see through rather than capturing our interest in her own right."

While disagreeing with its classification as a novel, Falconer did however add that Farewell, My Queen "generates in the reader a real sense of being a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on the affairs of the great and the not-so-good.