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Laddar... The Paragon Hotel (urspr publ 2018; utgåvan 2019)av Lyndsay Faye (Författare)
VerksinformationThe Paragon Hotel av Lyndsay Faye (2018)
   Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.   ) laytonwoman3rd | Sep 11, 2023 |   ) Maydacat | Dec 25, 2022 | The plot begins with Alice (who proudly accepts the moniker "Nobody" for her gifts at blending into any background) escaping via train from disastrous developments in her life of Prohibition-era crime in NYC. A Pullman porter recognizes that she appears to be in hiding, and that she is suffering from an untreated gunshot wound. Upon arrival in Portland he escorts her to the Paragon Hotel, the only upscale lodging for African Americans in the city, and home to a diverse community that becomes the west coast cast of the story. So we have two fascinating stories featuring Alice, who is sometimes front and center, but generally in the background of scenes that are dominated by more vivid characters. Along the way we learn some things about the NYC Mafia, and a whole lot about the racism endemic to Oregon in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was enforced by legislation and fanned by the Ku Klux Klan. Faye manages to insert other topics that remain controversial to this day without missing a beat. Story and characters aside, the most striking quality of this book is the dialog, much of which is an Americanized version of the brittle 1920's repartee found in many Golden Age mystery novels, amplified by a gin-and-jazz quality. I have to admit that at first this seemed a bit discordant to me, but as the story evolved it became such a part of the personalities of the key characters that I relaxed and enjoyed it. Alice would have. (  ) BarbKBooks | Aug 15, 2022 | READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW OVER AT FRESH FICTION! (  ) MaraBlaise | Jul 23, 2022 | BUT, holy cow, she uses another marginalized population as a dramatic plot twist and it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. She was obviously attempting to develop empathy for that character, and maybe there's something to be said for the idea that the people who most need to develop that empathy would never pick up the book if they knew the character's identity from the get-go. But. That doesn't negate the fact that the "reveal" was a sensationalized moment designed to make the reader yell "Oh my god!" (which I did). And coming at the end of the book, like any good plot twist, there's no room to tell the character's story except in the barest outline. Readers who are already inclined to empathize with this population will do so, and readers who aren't will probably just see an author trying to garner book sales by being sensational. So I guess I admire the attempt to bring a marginalized population into the story, but the execution was poor. As deftly as Faye treats racism in a city that has a contemporary reputation for progressivism, she fails to bring the same nuance to a character who exists under a different and no less harmful oppression. And in the end, she does set up a bit of a "savior" narrative, although race is not the relevant factor. Oh, and the slang did get a little tiresome. ( ) IVLeafClover | Jun 21, 2022 |
A young white woman named Alice James flees Prohibition-era Harlem by rail with an oozing bullet wound and a satchel containing $50,000 in cash. She makes it cross-country to Portland, Oregon, where Max, a kindly, strapping black Pullman porter and World War I veteran, whisks her away to the novel's eponymous hotel, populated mostly with African-Americans besieged by threats from the local Ku Klux Klan. You needn't be an aficionado of crime melodrama or period romance for those two sentences to have you at "Hello," and Faye (Jane Steele, 2016, etc.) more than delivers on this auspicious premise with a ravishing novel that rings with nervy elegance and simmers with gnawing tension. The myriad elements of Faye's saga are carried along by the jaunty, attentive voice of Alice, who came by her nickname "Nobody" as a young girl growing up on the crime-infested Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she acquired the ability to hide in plain sight among the neighborhood's mobsters, leg- breakers, and bootleggers. She calls upon this chameleonlike talent as she embeds herself among her newfound protectors, some of whom are wary of her presence. But Alice has at least one Paragon resident solidly in her corner: the stunning Blossom Fontaine, a dauntingly sophisticated cabaret singer whose own past is as enigmatic and checkered as Alice's. Blossom, Max, and the rest of the hotel's residents dote on a precocious, inquisitive mixed-race child named Davy Lee who vanishes from their sight one afternoon at an amusement park. As the Klan begins to show signs of renewed aggression toward Portland's black citizenry and corrupt cops start throwing their weight around the hotel, Alice is compelled to deploy her street-wise skills with greater urgency to help find Davy Lee. In doing so, she also unravels secrets within secrets that carry deadly and transformative implications for her and for everybody around her. This historical novel, which carries strong reverberations of present-day social and cultural upheavals, contains a message from a century ago that's useful to our own time: "We need to do better at solving things." A riveting multilevel thriller of race, sex, and mob violence that throbs with menace as it hums with wit. Uppmärksammade listor
Fiction.
Mystery.
Thriller.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:The new and exciting historial thriller by Lyndsay Faye, author of Edgar-nominated Jane Steele and Gods of Gotham, which follows Alice "Nobody" from Prohibition-era Harlem to Portland's the Paragon Hotel. The year is 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit drug and liquor deal gone horribly wrong. Desperate to get as far away as possible from New York City and those who want her dead, she has her sights set on Oregon: a distant frontier that seems the end of the line. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of Harlem, who leads Alice to the Paragon Hotel upon arrival in Portland. Her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be the only all-black hotel in the city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises. But as she meets the churlish Dr. Pendleton, the stately Mavereen, and the unforgettable club chanteuse Blossom Fontaine, she begins to understand the reason for their dread. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers??burning crosses, inciting violence, electing officials, and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice, along with her new "family" of Paragon residents, are willing to search for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the Oregon woods. Why was "Nobody" Alice James forced to escape Harlem? Why do the Paragon's denizens live in fear??and what other sins are they hiding? Where did the orphaned child who went missing from the hotel, Davy Lee, come from in the first place? And, perhaps most important, why does Blossom Fontaine seem to be at the very center of this tangle Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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 Google Books — Laddar...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg: (3.72)
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