Jo, the firstborn, 'The General' to her eleven sisters, is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of the confines of their father's townhouse to await the cabs that will take them to the speakeasy. Together they elude their distant and controlling father, until the day he decides to marry them all off.The girls, meanwhile, continue to dance, from Salon Renaud to the Swan and, finally, the Kingfisher, the club they come to call home. They dance until one night when they are caught in a raid, separated, and Jo is thrust face-to-face with someone from her past: a bootlegger named Tom whom she hasn't seen in almost ten years. Suddenly Jo must weigh in the balance not only the demands of her father and eleven sisters, but those she must make of herself.With The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, award-winning writer Genevieve Valentine takes her superb storytelling gifts to new heights, joining the leagues of such Jazz Age depicters as Amor Towles and Paula McClain, and penning a dazzling tale about love, sisterhood, and freedom. 'Unique and elegant. An artful book that asks important questions about art and creation that you'll be left pondering long after you've closed the last page.'
. io9.com. 'Intoxicating.
Stands apart thanks to dynamic characters and a resoundingly well-rendered setting.' . Tor.com. 'I couldn't turn the pages fast enough and stayed up late to reach the end.
Genevieve Valentine resurrects 1920s New York to bring an inventive tale of shifting social mores, family bonds, and heart-wrenching choices.' - Ronlyn Domingue, author of The Mercy of Thin Air 'Genevieve Valentine has turned out an extraordinary and marvelous new thing from very old clothes. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is a sumptuous rendering of one of my favorite fairy tales.'
Genevieve Valentine - The Girls At The Kingfisher Club Epub Book
- Kelly Link, author of Pretty Monsters and Magic for Beginners 'The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is as fast-tempoed and intoxicating as a night at a Jazz Age speakeasy, and as enchanting as a good old-fashioned fairy tale. Genevieve Valentine gives us a dozen dazzling sisters it's impossible not to root for.' - Lois Leveen, author of Juliet's Nurse and The Secrets of Mary Bowser 'Has a cinematic sweep. and lush period detail.' . Publishers Weekly.
'Valentine raises the novel above the ordinary.Impressive.' . The New York Times.
'Valentine's novel has glamour in spades, evocative of the Jazz Age's fashions and dance crazes and the dark side of prohibition.' .
Historical Novel Society. 'Delightful and suspenseful by turns, this story of tyranny, pluck, fierce love and even fiercer responsibility is set in a New York of spangles and speakeasies, fox-trots and Charlestons. Valentine retains the shimmer and shadows of the fairytale that underlies her novel, even as she transforms it.' - Christina Schwarz, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drowning Ruth 'This unexpected fairytale, deftly shifted into the age of prohibition, becomes a gorgeous and bewitching novel.' - Scott Westerfeld, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Uglies and Afterworlds 'Valentine's creative retelling of 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses' is as vibrant and colorful as the era - so evocative, well drawn, well cast and well played that readers will be enthralled. This is a story of sisterhood, a passion for freedom and love that will resonate with many women. The novel calls readers to cheer on these girls as they strive for independence, and Valentine's ability to make them each distinct and appealing sets this tale apart.
Simply a delight to read!' . Romantic Times, 4 1/2 stars.
'The novel shines. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is like a jittery Charleston-loose, fast, and fun.' . Booklist. 'Dressed up in the thrill and sparkle of the Roaring Twenties, the classic fairy tale of 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses' has never been more engrossing or delightful.
Valentine's fresh, original style and choice of setting make this a fairy tale reimagining not to be missed.' .
Library Journal (starred review). 'I'm completely confident in stating, without an ounce of hyperbole, that this is the best fairy tale retelling I've ever read. The beating heart of this book is a love of dance and a love of sisters. Even more than the characters, their voices, or the sharp quiet slicing of the understated prose, what I loved about this book was its own tense dance with its source materials. There is so much more I want to say about this book: about the ways in which women protect and support each other; about the way they feel like antidotes to The Great Gatsby's brittle ciphers; about the pitch-perfect dialogue; about the dancing. I can't stop re-reading this book for the dancing and the fierce, scalding love the sisters have for it.' - NPR 'A mesmerizing, surreal retelling.
Valentine's dreamlike narrative brings the Brothers Grimm tale alive with intrigue and gritty descriptions of the Roaring Twenties.' . The Washington Post.
“Dressed up in the thrill and sparkle of the Roaring Twenties, the classic fairy tale of ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’ has never been more engrossing or delightful. Valentine’s fresh, original style and choice of setting make this a fairy tale reimagining not to be missed” ( Library Journal, starred review).Jo, the firstborn, “The General” to her eleven sisters, is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of the confines of their father’s Manhattan townhouse and into the cabs that will take them to the speakeasy. Together they elude their distant and controlling father, until the day he decides to marry them all off.The girls, meanwhile, continue to dance, from Salon Renaud to the Swan and, finally, the Kingfisher, the club they've come to call home. They dance until one night when they are caught in a raid, separated, and Jo is thrust face-to-face with someone from her past: a bootlegger named Tom whom she hasn’t seen in almost ten years. Suddenly Jo must balance not only the needs of her father and eleven sisters, but her own as well.With The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, award-winning writer Genevieve Valentine takes her superb storytelling gifts to new heights, joining the leagues of such Jazz Age depicters as Amor Towles and Paula McLain, and penning a dazzling tale about love, sisterhood, and freedom. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club one NO SIR, THAT’S NOT MY GALBy 1927 there were twelve girls who danced all night and never gave names, but by then the men had given up asking and called them all Princess.“Hey, Princess, dust off your shoes?
It’s the Charleston!”The men would have called them anything they wanted to be called, Dollface or Queenie or Beloved, just to get one girl on the dance floor for a song. But in that flurry of short dresses and spangles and ribbon-tied shoes, Princess was the name that suited; it seemed magical enough, like maybe it was true.Wild things, these girls; wild for dancing. They could go all night without sitting, grabbing at champagne between songs, running to the throng at the table and saying something that made them all laugh, light and low together like the parts of a chorus.It wasn’t right, all those women sticking together so close. Something about the wall of bob-haired girls scared the men, though they hardly knew it. They just knew they’d better dance their best with a Princess, and no mistake.No need to worry, though, as long as a man could dance. The nights were long and drink was cheap, and sometimes the Princesses’ smiles were red-lipped and happy and not sharp white flashing teeth, and there were so many that if one of them turned down a dance, it was easy to wait and try again with another one.“Princess, pass me a waltz?”Some men never noticed their full numbers. (It was hardly fair to even ask a man to count; there were two pairs of twins—or three, hard to say—and it was easy to get confused.) They moved in little packs, two and three at a time, and it was tough to keep track.
Some men thought there were only ten, or nine. The younger ones, boys just out from under their mothers’ noses, saw only the one they loved in the crowd.The older men understood how that mistake could happen—one had golden hair, one had bright green eyes, one had a swan’s neck; together they were intoxicating—but there was no point. The girls were wild for dancing, and nothing else. No hearts beat underneath those thin, bright dresses.
They laughed like glass.The coldest one looked like someone had dragged a statue out for the night, as if she would scratch out your eyes if you so much as looked at her sideways.No man was fool enough to ask her to dance. No reason to die young when there were eleven others.There were willing sisters who smelled like 4711, or Shalimar, or smoke; always some sweet ones who closed their eyes and revealed dark pencil along their lashes, who laughed when a partner swung them around, who grinned and touched a man’s shoe with her own when they tapped back and forth.No need to worry about battleaxes when a man had a girl who could light up the floor. No need to worry about loving one when all of them would be back tomorrow night. No need for names at all, so long as when a fellow called her “Princess,” she said, “Yes.”Turned out it was just as well, not knowing, once the newspapermen came asking.The Girls at the Kingfisher Club two THAT’S MY WEAKNESS NOWWhen Jo’s father summoned her to his office, it was the first time she’d heard from him in almost a year.She was in the upstairs library. It had been the schoolroom, but after the last governess was dismissed and lessons fell slowly by the wayside, only the bookish girls crossed the threshold for pleasure: Doris, Rebecca, Araminta, and Jo.(“What is there to even look at?” asked Lou, who read plumbing manuals and fashion papers and little else.Jo said, “The atlas.”)“Miss Hamilton,” a maid said from the doorway to the library. “Your father’s asking for you.”Walters always sent a maid up to the girls’ floors rather than go himself; Jo guessed he kept to the old ways of doing these things.
This one was a stranger—there were always new maids, it seemed—and couldn’t have been older than Sophie.A little behind her, Araminta’s and Rebecca’s worried faces appeared in the hall.Jo stood and smoothed her skirt.As Jo passed, Rebecca whispered, “Good luck, General.”Walters was waiting for her on the second-floor landing, and he led the way, as though Jo might not know where the study was.She might not have. Their father moved his study, sometimes, as rooms took his fancy. He summoned Jo every so often, and she’d sometimes find him in a refurbished parlor or the library downstairs, if he had grown tired of his proper study. The rooms lined the right-hand side of the house, and the girls who lived above those rooms walked on glass even more than the rest.
For a year, when Rose and Lily were first learning to dance, Jo had found that his makeshift office was on the second floor just under their room, and they’d had to practice in Jo and Lou’s room to be sure he wouldn’t hear.Their room was over the high ceilings of the ballroom, which would only have been used for parties; they were always safe.As they approached the office (his proper office—he must be content with himself these days, to go back to old habits), Walters vanished with a doleful warning look, and Jo was alone.She wasn’t as frightened as Walters seemed to think she should be. The first time she’d been alone with her father, years ago, she’d realized what he thought of her. After that, the worst was over.It had been easy enough, after that, for Jo to come downstairs and listen to her father talk about how he was dismissing the governess, how the girls shouldn’t look out the windows so much, as people might ask questions.She’d come down half a dozen times, carrying an armful of worn-out shoes, to argue for a larger catalog allowance.Jo knew that her job, after he had spoken, was to be efficient, obedient, and grateful.(She had tried once, when she was fourteen, to argue with him over something. Her face had stung for three hours.)It was just as well that her father wanted to see her as rarely as she wanted to be seen.Mr.
Van de Maar, her father’s business associate, was on his way out; he carried the briefcase that always made him look as though he was smuggling cash out the front door. “I'm completely confident in stating, without an ounce of hyperbole, that this is the best fairy tale retelling I've ever read. The beating heart of this book is a love of dance and a love of sisters.
Even more than the characters, their voices, or the sharp quiet slicing of the understated prose, what I loved about this book was its own tense dance with its source materials. There is so much more I want to say about this book: about the ways in which women protect and support each other; about the way they feel like antidotes to The Great Gatsby's brittle ciphers; about the pitch-perfect dialogue; about the dancing. I can't stop re-reading this book for the dancing and the fierce, scalding love the sisters have for it.' 'Valentine’s creative retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” is as vibrant and colorful as the era — so evocative, well drawn, well cast and well played that readers will be enthralled. This is a story of sisterhood, a passion for freedom and love that will resonate with many women. The novel calls readers to cheer on these girls as they strive for independence, and Valentine’s ability to make them each distinct and appealing sets this tale apart. Simply a delight to read!'
– Romantic Times, 4 1/2 stars.