Speak Easy
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3.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
If you go looking for it, just about halfway uptown and halfway downtown, there’s this hotel stuck like a pin all the way through the world. Down inside the Artemisia it’s this mortal coil all over. Earthly delights on every floor.
The hotel Artemisia sits on a fantastical 72nd Street, in a decade that never was. It is home to a cast of characters, creatures, and creations unlike any other, including especially Zelda Fair, who is perfect at being Zelda, but who longs for something more. The world of this extraordinary novella—a bootlegger's brew of fairy tales, Jazz Age opulence, and organized crime—is ruled over by the diminutive, eternal, sinister Al. Zelda holds her own against the boss, or so it seems. But when she faces off against him and his besotted employee Frankie in a deadly game that just might change everything, she must bet it all and hope not to lose…
Multiple-award-winning, New York Times’ bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente once again reinvents a classic in Speak Easy, which interprets “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” if Zelda Fitzgerald waltzed in and stole the show. This Prohibition-Era tale will make heads spin and hearts pound. It’s a story as old as time, as effervescent as champagne, and as dark as the devil’s basement on a starless night in the city.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Artemisia Hotel is a very hot spot in New York City sometime in an alternate version of the Jazz Age. Its rooms are inhabited by writers, artists, and everybody who's anybody, and its basement is run by Al, who is both a king of Faerie and the lord of the dead. Valente (Six-Gun Snow White) follows Zelda Fair, who lives in the Artemisia and wants to become great at something; she isn't sure what yet. The busboy, Frankie Key, loves Zelda and follows her into Al's basement when she disappears. But Valente's novella-length take on fairy tales is more complicated than the plot of any single traditional story, and Frankie and Zelda may not be destined to be a fairy-tale romance. Valente's language is extravagantly rich, and her world is filled with fascinating details. The amount of story packed into this slender volume would easily fill a novel; unfortunately, it is somewhat cramped in its smaller setting.
