'The Queen of the Night' Indulges in Music and Mystery

Lilliet Berne is a mysteriously gorgeous soprano opera singer. Her vocal range is described as a Falcon—deceptively disguised as a mezzo, but unexpectedly hiding the ability to reach the highest notes with delicate tragic beauty. Like its protagonist, Alexander Chee’s novel “The Queen of the Night” contains endless hidden heights of intrigue and surprise. What initially seem like clichés set the scene for the novel, and yet every turn twists unexpectedly to yield a satisfying unforeseen development or result. Indeed, Satisfying is perhaps the one word that can best describe Chee’s novel. Chee composes an indulgent world of music and magic, prostitutes and nobles, in a novel that is not so much a novel as it is an immersive performance that lingers in the imagination even after it has ended.

Envied by all, swathed in luxury and worshipped by innumerable masses of fans and suitors, Lilliet Berne is at her height of fame and wealth in high Parisian society when the sudden uncovering of her secret past ambushes her. The premise of the plot may seem predictable: A beautiful and famous female celebrity, surrounded by persistent suitors and the glamor of ball gowns and dances, harbors a mysterious past. However, each time the plot seems to fall comfortably into a foreseeable outcome, Chee brings in a surprise that raises the suspense ever higher. Chee seems to know and give exactly what the reader really wants to see even if they may not even know it yet.

Thematically, the performance never ends. Lilliet plays a role both onstage and off, and the book itself, about opera and show, presents a staged spectacle. The blurred lines of performance and reality draw the reader into the same complicated and suspenseful world of truth and lies that Lilliet inhabits. “I was their creature, Lilliet Berne…the Falcon soprano whose voice was so delicate it was rumored she endangered it even by speaking…, said to turn arias into spells, hymns into love songs, simple requests into commands.…The details of my roles had become the only details of my life,” she muses of her exaggerated public image. Lilliet has had to perform in all aspects of her life in order to survive—and as such, the book is essentially one long, mesmerizing show by Lilliet for the reader.

Chee also does not fail to address the role of gender in Lilliet’s sink-or-swim society. Although a dazzling spectacle after she achieves her success, Lilliet’s life is far from glamorous for most of her journey to the top. Her gender disadvantages her in many ways and forces her to learn to be soft and submissive on the outside while remaining tough and resilient within. She learns to gain whatever control a woman can in a world dominated by men. “Men often complain of the wickedness of women. Of how we delight in what power we have over their hearts. But they reign over everything else, so of course, they grudge us this, should we ever come to rule over this thing the size of their fist,” she later notes. Chee achieves a satisfying balance in his characterization of Lilliet, portraying her strength as a woman and her use of her sexuality without demonizing her as a femme fatale.

If the thrill of the plot and the themes of performance and gender were not already stunning enough, the sheer beauty of Chee’s language is surely ample reason to enjoy his novel. Chee creates an almost dreamlike quality, drawing the reader into Lilliet’s head, seeing the world through her eyes. He omits quotation marks for dialogue, so the text feels like a stream of thought or observation. The story flows along at an engaging pace, occasionally slowing, but the action never stops. Chee’s prose itself is often poetic. On grief, he writes, “Why is it so loud when you cry from grief? Because it must be loud enough for the missing one to hear, though it never can be. Loud enough to scale the sky and the backs of angels, or to fall through the earth to where they come to rest.” Chee precisely captures nuances of feeling that bring his text to life: After Lilliet encounters a former lover she longs to escape, she “looked down at his naked body and the unexpected, even extraordinary beauty of it. Why was I not used to it? But, of course, each time I saw it, I sought to forget it, and so each time it was new.”

The experience of reading “The Queen of the Night” is like watching a movie or play, as the story is smoothly laid before the reader’s eyes. The novel flows effortlessly, integrating history just enough for the setting the feel real and grounded, but involving so much fantasy that it sweeps the reader into a world of excitement, wonder, and artistic beauty at every turn. Five hundred plus pages fly by in an immersive flurry. The spectacle of “The Queen of the Night” is magical and indulgent and never fails to satisfy.

—Staff Writer Kay T. Xia can be reached at kay.xia@thecrimson.com