The Queen of the Night
Alexander Chee, 2016
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544925472
Summary
Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singer’s chance at immortality.
When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.
As she mines her memories for clues, she recalls her life as an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept up into the glitzy, gritty world of Second Empire Paris. In order to survive, she transformed herself from hippodrome rider to courtesan, from empress’s maid to debut singer, all the while weaving a complicated web of romance, obligation, and political intrigue.
Featuring a cast of characters drawn from history, The Queen of the Night follows Lilliet as she moves ever closer to the truth behind the mysterious opera and the role that could secure her reputation—or destroy her with the secrets it reveals. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1967-68 (?)
• Where—South Kingstown, Rhode Island, USA
• Education—B.A., Wesleyan University
• Awards—Whiting Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Alexander Chee is an American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer. Born in Rhode Island, he spent his childhood in South Korea, Kauai, Truk, Guam and Maine. He graduated from Wesleyan University and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh (2001) and The Queen of the Night (2016). He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, Guernica, NPR and Out, among others.
He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose, a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak.
He has taught writing at Wesleyan University, Amherst College, the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Texas– Austin. He was Picador Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig.
He lives in New York City, where he curates the Dear Reader series at Ace Hotel New York. (Adapted from the author's website and Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/14/2016.)
Book Reviews
Extravagant five-act grand opera of a novel...readers willing to submit to the spell of this glittering, luxuriantly paced novel will find that it rewards their attention, from its opening mysteries to its satisfying full-circle finale. Mr. Chee could be speaking of his own work when he exalts "the ridiculous and beloved thief that is opera—the singer who sneaks into the palace of your heart and somehow enters the stage singing aloud the secret hope or love or grief you hoped would always stay secret, disguised as melodrama." The highest compliment one can pay this book is that it is easy to imagine a version of it triumphing on the stage.
Wall Street Journal
Under the layers of plot and operatic melodrama, the constant scene changes and set pieces, Queen of the Night explores the question of what gives the courtesan her hold, her power over the hearts of men.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
This should be a stirring tale, and at times it is, but Chee doesn’t let us stay stirred for long. He is constantly throwing flashbacks and flash-forwards at us, so that we lose the thread of the plot. The story, anyway, is too packed with sensational events for us to keep them straight. Above all, Chee blocks our engagement by keeping Lilliet distant from us. For all her claims of experiencing intense emotion, we never feel that we know much about her inner life.
The New Yorker
The Queen of the Night is a 576-page historical novel [with a] plot that is operatically elaborate, enthralling, and occasionally far fetched—a bit like Verdi’s La Forza del Destino in its twists and turns. Chee has the great novelistic skill...of getting his character into sticky situations and letting her get out of them with her creativity and intelligence. Chee does an excellent job of making the world of 19th-century opera—an art form that continues to struggle with the perception that it is not fun—lively and fascinating and louche.
Slate
It’s the ball gowns, and roses, magic tricks and, ruses, hubris and punishment that will keep the reader absorbed until the final aria, waiting to see whom fate will curse and whom it will avenge.
Time
[L]ush and sweeping.... Though the momentum flags in the book’s lengthy central sections, Chee’s voice, at once dreamy and dramatic, never falters; Lilliet’s cycle of reinventions is a moving meditation on the transformative power of fate, art, time, and sheer survival.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) In a richly imagined work nonetheless grounded in fact, we follow Lilliet from one performance to another as she attempts to outrun a curse that she believes has been cast upon her.... Verdict: completely engrossing work that should appeal to the widest range of readers, especially those with a taste for historical fiction. —Edward B. Cone, New York
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Life as opera: the intrigues and passions of a star soprano in 19th-century Paris.... [T]he voice [Chee] has created for his female protagonist never falters.... Richly researched, ornately plotted, this story demands, and repays, close attention.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is Lilliet’s belief in Fate? How does she see it ruling over her life? Do you think she is in control of her own actions? In what ways do you see her at the will of Fate and how does she make her own way in the world?
2. “Your Fach was your fate as a singer, as far as roles went, and so no wonder if we felt our fates came from our Fächer as well” (478). What does it mean to be a Falcon? How did it affect Lilliet’s fate? What is the Tenor’s Fach and how does it compare to Lilliet’s?
3. What is Lilliet’s real name? What are some of her many nicknames and why does she have so many?
4. What is Lilliet’s curse (or curses)? Do you think the curse is real?
5. “It was as if I had two voices now, the one strong and clear, the other turned to ash. As if the voice that could speak had been punished for the pride of the one that could sing. The gift and the test” (55). What is the significance of Lilliet’s different abilities to speak and to sing?
6. “There were only three people in Paris who knew of the rose’s time with me and the secrets I’d want to keep. It had taken me to each of them in turn, once I had accepted it from the Emperor’s hand. The first still loved me but had betrayed me, the second had once owned me. The third, I would say, never thought of me at all. Or, so I hoped...There was once a fourth, but he was dead” (76–77). Who are these four characters and what were their relationships to Lilliet? Was she correct in her evaluations of each of them at this point in the story? How does each of their stories evolve?
7. How is Lilliet the “Queen of the Night”? Why is the book called this?
8. Why does Lilliet allow herself to be registered when she is arrested with Euphrosyne? Why is this so surprising to everyone else? Think about how and if characters are acting according to gender norms of the day, and how they look to subvert them.
9. “She wanted only to be feared. I wanted to be feared and loved. I didn’t want everything she had as she stood on stage that night. I wanted more” (120). Look at the various role models Lilliet had— Euphrosyne, the Countess, Eugenie, Cora, her mother. What did Lilliet want for herself that these women didn’t have? How did she set out to achieve that?
10. Discuss the importance of clothing and appearance in the novel. What do Lilliet’s cancan shoes mean to her? How do men use the gift of clothing to their advantage? Look at the opening scene and how Lilliet’s change of clothing changes people’s perception of her. Other instances to examine might be the wardrobe of the Empress, the events at the costume ball, or other ways Lilliet must disguise and reinvent herself.
11. Who were Lilliet’s voice teachers and how did each shape her as a person?
12. For Lilliet, what does it mean to be free? Are there any female characters in this novel who are truly free? Discuss the idea of freedom, how it has evolved for women since the time of the setting of this novel, and what it means to you.
13. Look at the various relationships in the novel and discuss the characters’ motivations for entering into them. Which relationships are purely utilitarian? Who is using whom and how? Where do you see true love and true friendship?
14. Where does Lilliet come from and where does she go? What is her overall trajectory? What are her various professions, what does she learn from each of them, and how does she use them to get to where she wants to be? (And where does she want to be, ultimately?) Who does she love, who is her family?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)