The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singers' 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.

• ISBN10: 0618663029
• ISBN13: 9780618663026
• Publish Date: 2 February 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 21 April 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Houghton Mifflin
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 576
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

The Queen of the Night is the story of Lilliet Berne, a woman who went from being an orphan in the American Midwest to one of the most famous opera singers in France during the Second Empire (mid- to late-1800s). Very few know her whole story, and when someone threatens her with revealing her secrets, she does all she can to find who they are.

The story bounces back and forth between the Lilliet of the present and the Lilliet of the past. Along the way she lives many lives — of a traveling circus performer, a courtesan, a kept woman, an Empress’s maid, a famous opera singer. She is pulled into not only the intrigue of the opera, but the political intrigue surrounding the fall of Napoleon III. We learn about her life as she searches her past and tries to figure out who is threatening her with exposure.

I enjoyed this book, though I found it hard to follow at times. It often wasn’t clear which time period you were in until you got some context clues. Also, I completely lost track of how old she was at the different times of her life… I ended up thinking she should have been much older than she is supposed to be. It often wasn’t clear how much time had passed between one event and the next.

Also, Lilliet is a bit difficult to connect to. Though many tragic things happen to her, she often just picks up her skirts and moves on with nary an emotional response. Many people are left in her wake, and she just moves on with what appears to be little thought of how they may feel being left behind.

One thing I did appreciate is that the novel is structured much like a tragic opera, with emotional ups and downs. It’s a bit of a time investment, but I recommend this for anyone who likes historical fiction and a time period/area of interest that is a bit out of the ordinary.

“Victory, defeat, victory, defeat, victory, defeat. Such is tragedy.”

[gmcgregor]

An ever-changing identity is the centerpiece of Alexander Chee's The Queen of the Night. We're introduced to Lilliet Berne at the height of her fame as an operatic soprano in Paris in the 1870s. She's approached by a man who says he can give her the one honor that she hasn't attained so far: a role she can originate. The only snag is that the new opera is based on a novel that's clearly based on her own past, a past she thought she'd managed to escape from. There are only a handful of people who know her real life, and she determines to find out which one of them has betrayed her.

The book is a recounting of the story of her life, with one incredible circumstance leading directly into another: she grows up in frontier America and sets out to get to Switzerland, where she has relatives, once her entire family dies. In order to make it overseas, she joins a circus, from which she escapes to become a hippodrome rider, and then becomes a prostitute, and then a handmaid to the Empress of France, and finally an opera singer in training. She becomes an figure of obsession to a professional tenor and he dogs her steps, determined to possess her entirely, even while she tries to elude him and falls in love with another man. She does eventually find out who is behind the mysterious new opera and it seems for a while that she might even get a happy ending...but this is a story about opera, and operas don't usually have one of those.

If you read that plot outline and thought it sounds insane, you're right. IT'S BONKERS. But it's really good! I tend to be irritated by plots that require too many convenient contrivances, but with this book it's best to put logic aside and just enjoy the ride, because it is a fantastic, soapy trip that Chee takes us on. It's a bit on the long side, but it doesn't get bogged down anywhere...you might think that with the list of twists and turns that Lilliet's life takes, that it would feel cluttered or get hard to keep track of what was going on, but Chee is in control of his story and characters, and creates a vivid, lively world that was hard to tear myself away from.

This is one of those books that I kept promising myself I would stop at the end of the chapter to go to sleep, and was hard pressed to resist just one more after that before turning out the light. My one quibble would be that in a book full of evocative characters, Lilliet herself is a bit of a cipher. But, given the many shifts in her circumstances and role she is meant to play, too big of a personality wouldn't feel quite right either. Her most defining feature is her determination to survive...no matter what comes around the bend, she always manages to figure out a way to adapt and keep going. That's a powerful statement in and of itself. Overall, though, this is a very enjoyable read and I would heartily recommend it!