Speak Easy

Locations
Call Number: Fantasy / Valente, Catherynne
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Valente, Catherynne	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"This special signed edition is limited to 1250 numbered copies."
"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."--Book jacket.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Speak Easy submitted by Fevvers - STAR473 on July 2, 2016, 6:43am Heartbreaking, magical realist, fairy tale of flappers and artists and all manner of strangeness. The main character is an analogue of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. Zelda Fair is passionate, smart, carefree, and empathetic as well as being young and beautiful. Multiple fairy tales are referenced in this book, but the main parallel is with The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

It is fitting that the cover art is a keyhole design - we peek into a rambunctious, fantastical hotel filled with dancers and writers and bakers and locksmiths, and some very strange staff members, including the shadowy manager. And we are then delightully housed in this fantasy version of the Roaring '20s, moving from one floor to the next, visiting various characters in different rooms, discovering intrigue and magic.

Decadent submitted by Princess Cimorene on July 19, 2020, 10:33pm This is a stylish narrative that is really successful in transporting the reader to the glitzy, decadent hotel Artemesia. The 1920s wild party atmosphere coils around you as you read. Some might say that the writing is overdone, but I absolutely loved the way the words purred on every single page. I'm not sure if I was slightly disappointed in the ending or if I was just disappointed that the book was over.

cross section of humanity at Slake's Artemesia Hotel, Al's Speakeasy submitted by aScheller on October 8, 2023, 12:24pm The Book itself narrates in DamonRunyonesque 20'sSpeak prose how the amazing Zelda fayre (that's antique "s" not modern "f") managed to get herself attached to spy/bellhop/hack-writer Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, before, you know--.
As for humans, artists, bibliophiles in particular, Al knows well that our drug of choice is Stories.