by Alexander Chee
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee is one of those books that I should have fell in love with from the opening pages. From the synopsis it sounded to me like most everything I love about historical fiction. Sadly, I was disappointed. Lilliet Berne is a famous Paris opera singer with a checked ...
This book was taking me too long to read because the writing was too complex. There are no quotation marks so it's hard to tell what is spoken. And I spent so much time trying to decipher the writing that I didn't retain a word. I spent 3 hours reading this and only made 50 pages.
With a story about an opera singer, whose secret past has suddenly shown up as the subject of a new opera, it's no surprise that The Queen of the Night is, well, operatic in scope and feel. A massive story, epic in scale, traversing continents, surviving sieges, and mired in political intrigue and...
Queen of the Night barreled into a certain niche I was only sort of mildly aware I had in the first place pretty hard. I'm a relatively recent convert to opera, and absolutely no expert. I enjoy opera, and it's refined, elegant, crazy melodrama. How something that we push up as elegant and elite and...
"The Queen of the Night" was inspired by (but not based on) the story of Jenny Lind. In this book, Lilliet is an American soprano who goes abroad and, after several tribulations, finds great acclaim as an operatic soprano. Author Alexander Chee most certainly did his research; the author's note at...
A voice is a fragile thing. In the larger sense, voices can be drowned out by the majority, written off, diminished. When voices are silenced, we lose a bit of the richness of the world. More specifically, an singer’s voice can be ruined by drinking and drugs (Marianne Faithfull), smoking (Joni Mitc...
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