conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled The Queen of the Night about I>The, Queen, Night</I with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: <DIV><DIV><B>National Bestseller<BR /><I>New York Times</I> Editor&#39;s Choice<BR /> A Best Book of the Year from NPR, <I>Boston Globe, </I>Buzzfeed<I>, </I><I>Esquire</I>, <I>San Francisco Chronicle,</I><I>Time Out, Self, </I>Jezebel, <I>The Portland Mercury, </I>Electric Literature, and <I>Entropy Magazine</I><BR /> An Indie Next Pick<BR /> One of the Most Anticipated Titles of 2016 by <I>Entertainment Weekly</I>, <I>Wired</I>, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, BBC, Bustle, The Millions, Flavorwire, Book Riot, Brooklyn Magazine, and Bookish.</B><BR /><B>A <I>Guardian </I>Best Book of the Summer </B><BR /><B>A Best Book of the Year So Far from <I>Esquire</I>, Refinery 29, and <I>Financial Times</I></B><BR /><BR /> &quot;<I>The Queen of the Night</I> joins <I>Tipping the Velvet</I> and <I>The Crimson Petal and the White</I> as the rare historical novel in which the setting may be old, but the writing makes everything feel brand new. the author has written a subversive, sexy epic about a young American girl who struggles more than her fans will ever understand on her way to eventually become a highly celebrated soprano at the Paris Opera House. Lillet Berne&#39;s dramatic rise to success is all the more exciting because of all the wonderful details the author includes about her life in the late 19th century. The descriptions of her dresses alone are worth the price of this book, and the author&#39;s knowledge about opera is such that you can almost hear the music when reading his words. But for all the research and historical detail, in the end, it&#39;s a love story, as so many of the most excellent books are.&quot;--<B> Maris Kreizman, Esquire </B><BR /><BR /> &ldquo;The novel is infused with an operatic sensibility&hellip;<I>The Queen of the Night</I> is a celebration of these women of creativity, ingenuity, endurance, mastery and grace&mdash;a gala in their honor.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Kelly Gardiner, <I>New York Times </I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Epic&hellip;Brilliantly extravagant in its twists and turns and its wide-ranging cast of character.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Julia Felsenthal, <I>Vogue </I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;[An] extravagant five-act grand opera of a novel&hellip;the author&rsquo;s writing is cultured and confident, and the elite society he depicts is dazzling&hellip;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.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Sam Sacks, <I>Wall Street Journal</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;A sweeping, richly detailed historical novel about a young woman&#39;s tumultuous trajectory from circus rider to renowned soprano at the Paris Opera.&quot; &mdash;<B>Kim Hubbard, <I>People</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;An opera of the page, complete with seduction, hidden identity, betrayal and plenty of costume changes&hellip;It&rsquo;s the ball gowns and roses, magic tricks and ruses, hubris and punishment that will keep the reader absorbed until the final aria.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Sarah Begley, <I>Time</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Gorgeous prose...Extraordinarily beautiful and dramatic, a brilliant performance.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Wendy Smith, <I>Washington Post</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;[A] postmodern bodice ripper&hellip;It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera&hellip;It offers a rare, intriguing psychology: the heart as a buried place, where someone is hiding, singing&mdash;words you can&rsquo;t quite hear.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Joan Acocella, <I>The New Yorker</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;[A] wild opera of a novel&hellip;Swift, smart, immersive, and gorgeous.&quot; &mdash;<B>Garth Greenwell, <I>The Guardian</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;If Lilliet Berne were a man, she might have been what 19th-century novels would call a swashbuckler: the kind of destiny-courting, death-defying character who finds intrigue and peril (and somehow, always, a fantastic pair of pantaloons) around every corner&hellip;The richness of [the author&rsquo;s] research is evident on every page. Paris&rsquo; glittering swirl of artists, artistocrats, and underworld habitu&eacute;s lives vividly in his descriptions.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Leah Greenblatt, <I>Entertainment Weekly </I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;Despite the nineteenth-century setting, the story couldn&rsquo;t be more appropriate for the Age of Kardashian&mdash;a masterful look at transformation and its unforeseen aftershocks.&quot; &mdash;<B>Nathan Smith, <I>Wired</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;<I>The Queen of the Night</I> tackles the fate of history, women&rsquo;s sexuality, and the inner lives of forgotten courtesans who wielded power at a time when women were often powerless. The intricate ways the author renders this past reveals so much about our present day.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Tanwi Nandini Islam, <I>Elle</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Vivid, glittering&hellip;A spellbinding story of intrigue and self-reinvention.&quot; &mdash;<B>Jarry Lee, <I>Buzzfeed</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;With a hint of the charm of Victorian erotica, a marvelously involute plot and a whiff of the circus in the American grain&hellip; the author has leaped to another scale altogether&hellip;Here, that voice, a rare instance of a fairy-tale first person, is at once fabulous in its simplicity and intimate in its specificity, making the story seem historical, mythic and at the same time deeply personal.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Ellen Akins, <I>Los Angeles Times</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;Enchants.&quot; &mdash;<B><I>US Weekly</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Operatically elaborate, enthralling&hellip;A bit like Verdi&rsquo;s <I>La Forza del Destino</I> in its twists and turns&hellip;the author does an excellent job of making the world of 19th-century opera&mdash;an art form that continues to struggle with the perception that it is not fun&mdash;lively and fascinating and louche.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Spencer Lenfield, <I>Slate </I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;A lush, imaginative novel, one that you&rsquo;ll hope never ends.&quot; &mdash;<B>Claire Luchette, <I>Travel and Leisure</I></B><BR /><BR /> &quot;This stunning tale of an opera singer is historical fiction at its finest.&quot; &mdash;<I><B>Self</B></I><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;A multi-stranded, thoroughly researched epic.&quot; &mdash;<B>Joe Fassler, <I>The Atlantic</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;<I>The Queen of the Night</I> is an astonishing universe into which its lucky readers can dissolve completely, metamorphosing alongside its shapeshifting protagonist. Lilliet Berne steals her name from a gravestone and launches into a life of full-throated song; her voice is an intoxicant, and this book is a glorious performance. the author&#39;s enveloping, seductive prose is perfectly matched to the circus world of the opera.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Karen Russell</B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;A luminous tale of power and passion. the author gives us an unforgettable heroine and a rich cast of characters&mdash;many of them real historical figures. The story dazzles and surprises right up until the final page.&quot; &mdash;<B>J. Courtney Sullivan</B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;One doesn&#39;t so much read the author&rsquo;s <I>The Queen of the Night</I> as one is bewitched by it. Beneath its epic sweep, gorgeous language, and haunting details is the most elemental, and eternal, of narratives: that of the necessities and perils of self-reinvention, and the sorrow and giddiness of aspiring to a life of artistic transcendence.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Hanya Yanagihara</B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;the author packs his extraordinary second novel, <I>The Queen of the Night</I>, to the seams with music, love, misery, and secrets. The kind of book&mdash;world&mdash;characters&mdash;you could live inside, happily, for days and days and never once want to come up for air.&quot; &mdash;<B>Kelly Link</B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;A night at an opera you&#39;ll wish never-ending.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Helen Oyeyemi</B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;<I>Queen</I> is as operative as its shape-shifting narrator&hellip;This is classical, full-throated melodrama, not so much a meditation as an aria on fate.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Boris Kachka, <I>New York</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Triumphant&hellip;Chock full of romance, intrigue, and sprinklings of real history, <I>The Queen of the Night</I> is the first truly epic novel of the year.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Jeva Lange, <I>The Week</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &#160;&ldquo;Sweeping, historical, and baroque&hellip;Glittering.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Constance Grady, <I>Vox</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;While the book does owe much to the extravagant spirit of mid-19th-century novels and operas, it pays its debt with grace. It is wonderfully free of the faintly smirking self-consciousness and knowingness that so often attends such ventures. It works on its own terms, boldly.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Katherine A. Powers, <I>Newsday</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;<I>Queen</I> joins ranks with the best historical novels and made me think, not infrequently as I read, of one of my all-time favorites&mdash;E.L. Doctorow&rsquo;s <I>Ragtime</I>.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Sonya Chung, <I>The Millions</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;A fantasia set in a world of opera, dance halls and the court intrigues of Second Empire Paris.&quot; &mdash;<B>Trisha Collopy, <I>Minneapolis Star-Tribune</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;The urgency with which the author has Lilliet telling her tales&hellip;keeps the reader off balance, racing through the pages without any possibility of stopping for fear of falling flat. It is that kind of novel, the kind one devours in a weekend or stays up too late reading.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Ilana Masad, <I>Electric Literature</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Impossibly deep and lyrical&hellip;You&rsquo;ll be hard-pressed to find a more complete reading experience this year.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Jonathan Sturgeon, <I>Flavorwire</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Epic and gorgeous&hellip;It&rsquo;s a tale of glamour, glitter, secrets, and intrigue.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Lincoln Michel, <I>Men&rsquo;s Journal</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;A sprawling and operatic novel.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Jane Hu, <I>The Awl</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Remarkable&hellip;Reading this book is deeply pleasurable, and its incorporation of historical detail feels seamless&hellip;It has all the trappings of the period: the artifice, the meticulously researched details, but at its heart is the story of a woman, lost, in love, and singing in the dark.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Natalie Bakopoulos, <I>San Francisco Chronicle</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Sprawling and dramatic&hellip;Plotted with baroque intricacy.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Nicholas Mancusi, <I>BOMB Magazine</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;A brilliant bright star of a book&hellip;A dizzying, delightful carousel ride through traveling circus troupes, harrowing prison escapes, the pleasure dens of courtesans, and an Empress&rsquo;s palace wardrobe that would make Lady Gaga&rsquo;s look basic&hellip;<I>The Queen of the Night</I> is a soaring falcon.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Tabitha Blankenbiller, <I>Bustle</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;A fabulous sage of an indomitable woman&hellip;It&rsquo;s like going to a grand opera; or reading Proust. Take your pick.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Thomas Urquhart, <I>Portland Press Herald</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;A singular and powerful novel&hellip;It&rsquo;s plot is gripping&hellip;but it&rsquo;s also a fascinating look at art, isolation, and acclaim.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>Tobias Carroll, <I>Vol. 1 Brooklyn</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;A grand, impeccably researched rollercoaster of a picaresque&hellip;<I>The Queen of the Night </I>unleashes the kind of thrill found only when you hear the voiceless sing.&rdquo; &mdash;<B>John H. Maher, <I>Entropy</I></B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &quot;<I>The Queen of the Night</I> is a radical act of art-making&hellip;Quite simply, it&rsquo;s a very intricate devotion to character and story, to believing in what an act of language can become.&quot; &mdash;<B>Carrie Lorig, <I>Arts Atlanta</I></B><BR /><BR /> &quot;the author&rsquo;s lush and sweeping second novel uses a strikingly different setting from <I>Edinburgh</I>, his accomplished debut, but shares its musical themes and boldness...the author&rsquo;s voice, at once dreamy and dramatic, never falters; Lilliet&rsquo;s cycle of reinventions is a moving meditation on the transformative power of fate, art, time, and sheer survival.&quot; &mdash;<B><I>Publishers Weekly</I></B><BR /><BR /> &quot;the author makes a bright, bold leap into the bright, bold world of Second Empire Paris with a book inspired by opera singer Jenny Lind.&quot; &mdash;<B><I>Library Journal</I></B><B>, pre-pub announcement</B><BR /><BR /> &quot;A mesmerizing novel.&quot; &mdash;<B><I>Booklist</I></B><BR /><BR /> &quot;Life as opera: the intrigues and passions of a star soprano in 19th-century Paris...Richly researched, ornately plotted, this story demands, and repays, close attention.&quot; &mdash;<B><I>Kirkus</I>, STARRED</B><BR /><BR /> &quot;A completely engrossing work that should appeal to the widest range of readers, especially those with a taste for historical fiction.&quot; &mdash;<B><I>Library Journal</I>, STARRED review</B></DIV></DIV>
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Queen of the Night
  My name, taken from the little graveyard by the East River, hadn't sounded like the stolen thing it was in years.
  The Americans favor a dark color, at least in New York, the people there colored like crows and sparrows. When I make my first entrance, on a trapeze decorated like a crescent moon, I feel them below me, the heat of them rising through the cold night air, the tobacco, the smoke, the cologne, and the perfume all together. I watch the jewels of the women flash in the dark as I descend. When I look down, the indigo silk panels to the backdrops, hung to make it look like night, are not as dark as the crowd, and so it looks, each time as I enter the ring, as if some of the real night from outside has come inside to wait below me.
  My future, then: a traveling show, a hippodrama with a year-long tour featuring two stars, a beautiful young man from Paris who plays the captured angel and me. And now we are in trains, the opera about a circus now a circus opera; and the crowds move in and out, all applause and tobacco, oily smoke off the tapers; and the tents rise, fill, fall. The angel wears taxidermy wings taken from a condor and isn't, according to the posters, allowed to fly because then he might "escape." He holds me tightly instead from behind as I ride the horse with him around the tent, the wings flapping in an imitation of flight. The man himself never wants to leave, and sometimes neither do I.
  The boy who plays the angel in our show is from Pest. He's unspeakably beautiful, taller than aerialists usually are, with pale white skin to match my own and long dark hair that flies in the air behind him like a flag. He's from a family of aerialists; his family has performed in circuses for at least a century. Perhaps since the birth of Christ. He launches himself into the air with only a rope tied to the roof of the tent. The prop master and the taxidermist used three normal condor wings each to make them. No living thing has ever used them to fly.
  At night, I go to the train's roof with him. When the cars wait patiently in the dark for some night procedure, and as the trainmen shout to one another, he hands the wings up to me, and I slide the harness on. As he ties them in place, a passing wind tugs the nets of feathers, bones, and glue, and I can feel where, if the harness wings were to grow into place, these might allow me to shrug up into the air. In the sky my eyes follow the path of the wind's gesture. I see for a moment as if from the place I would have gone to then, the distant train below me, how this boy would stare at me as I left, soaring.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: two more paragraphs. Start with the sentence 'When I make my entrance now on the trapeze swing, the tent painted to look like the sky at night, I want it then, ask for it from God'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: When I make my entrance now on the trapeze swing, the tent painted to look like the sky at night, I want it then, ask for it from God. As I step to the ground, the applause sounds to me at moments like hard rain. I try not to search for the places in the sky where I would be if I could fly. And yet, the wind at my back, this new appetite awakes, and I do.
  For now, it seems, the heroine is separated from her lover by the act he had hoped would bind them. I can feel the miles run under me, and I hope, by the tour's end, I will know which was greater, curse or fate. Soprano or song.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I still don't know why David told me that story. I just know that if he hadn't, I would never have written this novel. I cannot express how much I regret that I did not finish in time for him to read it. Any acknowledgments could only begin with him.
  There are many historical figures in these pages, however, and many texts proved invaluable as a resource. I have listed them in order of appearance with any credits regarding sources.
  Moulton also kept careful record of her lessons with Delsarte and Pauline Viardot-García's brother in those letters, which contributed to the novel as well.
  As characters, Euphrosyne, the tenor, and the Prince are all imaginary. Aristafeo and his dogs, the Lords of the Lower Garden, appeared to me in a dream.
  Thank you to everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt but especially to my editors: Webster Younce, who acquired it; Andrea Schulz, for her enthusiasm and patience despite receiving me as an orphan, and her determination to bring this novel out; and to Naomi Gibbs, who has seen it in so many forms and whose thoughtful work on its intricacies made this final version possible. I'm very grateful to them all. Thank you to Marian Ryan and David Hough, my copyeditors, on the first and second rounds, respectively—the novel is buttoned up and ready for the ball because of you.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I just know that if he hadn't, I would never have written this novel. I cannot express how much I regret that I did not finish in time for him to read it. Any acknowledgments could only begin with him.
  There are many historical figures in these pages, however, and many texts proved invaluable as a resource. I have listed them in order of appearance with any credits regarding sources.
  Moulton also kept careful record of her lessons with Delsarte and Pauline Viardot-García's brother in those letters, which contributed to the novel as well.
  As characters, Euphrosyne, the tenor, and the Prince are all imaginary. Aristafeo and his dogs, the Lords of the Lower Garden, appeared to me in a dream.
  Thank you to everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt but especially to my editors: Webster Younce, who acquired it; Andrea Schulz, for her enthusiasm and patience despite receiving me as an orphan, and her determination to bring this novel out; and to Naomi Gibbs, who has seen it in so many forms and whose thoughtful work on its intricacies made this final version possible. I'm very grateful to them all. Thank you to Marian Ryan and David Hough, my copyeditors, on the first and second rounds, respectively—the novel is buttoned up and ready for the ball because of you.