Speak Easy by Catherynne M. Valente
142 pages
Published 2015
Read from June 21 to June 22
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
A fairy tale retelling by Catherynne M. Valente, set in a magical hotel in Prohibition New York, starring a fairy named Al who makes liquor out of stories and art and kisses, and two mixed up human kiddies named Zelda and Frankie. Sound awesome? Prepare to be disappointed.
Unlike another disappointing novella by an author I admire, Connie Willis' D.A., Speak Easy doesn't fail by abandoning everything that made its author great. No, Speak Easy fails because it's almost a parody of Valente, as if she got stuck in high gear and couldn't tone down the narrative winks and prosical flourishes and oh-so-fucking-precious scene-setting until the whole thing careened off the road like a speeding jalopy with a few bolts left off in the factory. You don't read Valente for plots and characters, you read her for her prose poetry and her whirlwinds of imagination, yet even there, this book is something of a dud, reading for much of its length like half-finished notes for a rejected spinoff of her Fairyland series. Gone is the staggering lyricism of A Dirge for Prester John (1, 2), gone is the burnished postmodern puzzle box of Radiance. Certain details and ideas are worth salvaging; I'd read a whole novel about vaguely saurian fairies teaching cavemen to make music and dance, and the denouement, while predictable (would a book about a Zelda and a Frankie end any other way?), was solid storytelling. But as a whole, Speak Easy was an awkward combination of overstuffed and underpolished, a promising idea Valente just didn't take the time to realize in full.
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