Greasepaint

by Hannah Levene

Nylon's Most Anticipated Books of 2024

The Paris Review’s Favorite Books of 2023

Set against a backdrop of 1950s New York, this experimental novel follows an ensemble cast of all-singing, all-dancing butch dykes and Yiddish anarchists through eternal Friday nights, around the table, and at the bar. 

In one of many bars, Frankie Gold sings while Sammy Silver plays piano after a day job at the anarchist newspaper. The Butch Piano Players Union meets in the corner next to the jukebox. Laur smokes on the back steps, sweaty thigh to thigh with Vic. Frankie’s childhood sweetheart, Lily, turns up at yet another bar to see a second Sammy play every Friday night. And before all that, there’s always dinner at Marg’s. Fabulated out of oral histories, anthologies, as well as the fiction of the butch-femme bar scene and Yiddish anarchist tradition, Greasepaint is a rollicking whirlwind of music and politics—the currents of community embodied and held inside the bar.

Genres: Queer, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Fiction, Lesbian, Historical, Adult

159 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 5, 2024

Reviews

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Butches in bars are so important

[Isabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.5
I feel so bad rating this so low but I just could not get into it. I wanted to DNF many times but pushed through since it’s so short.
The main thing I had issues with was the experimental structure-I really should have read an excerpt of this book before buying or at least noted that it’s an experimental novel. But I was drawn in by butches and 1950s bar culture without really knowing much else.
Unfortunately I just don’t think my brain is big enough yet to understand this format lol…I didn’t have a clear picture who most of the characters were—some I did (Lily, Big Sur, Vic eventually) but most of the characters kind of just blurred together for me. I just didn’t know what was even happening the majority of the book. No plot just vibes except I could barely tell you what the vibes were besides butches in bars Jewish anarchists etc. There were some sections that I understood but *very* few and that frustrated me :( it seems like others have really enjoyed this book though so I do think part of it is me not knowing what I was getting into here and never having read a book in this style before I guess.

[Suzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Experimental 1950’s queer historical fiction alive w music and performance and overlapping conversations and struggles and leftist musings from the cast of all-butch characters. Brimming with the love (and fears) shared by these communities.

Written like a play, a million vignettes, an infinite number of possibilities. A fast-paced story that sometimes lost me, but I appreciated the blur of it all.

4.5

edit:
I loved this interview https://nightboat.org/an-interview-wi...
“there’s also this sense in the book that the styles the characters inhabit are inescapable, an inescapable Jewishness, an inescapable butchness. It’s claustrophobic to look in every direction and see white t-shirts, it’s a fucking nightmare just as much as a complete dream. Both are true. None of these identities are singular. They’re all coming out of one body. Maybe I have written a very Jewish book that is actually a very butch book or maybe I have written a very butch book that is actually a very Jewish book.”

[bird]

abandoned three pages in, which is fast for me, because the characters started on-page discoursing about ethical vs. subversive consumption of gershwin and sorry to say these are modern preoccupations. this is the iphone face of authorial perspective.

[Sydney · Rating 2 out of 5]

not for me, but most likely just because of the writing. i’m sorry i love butches but I need paragraphs

[Katy]

I need to digest this a bit. I loved the sexy & luminous & fight-to-get-intimate feelings between Vic and Laur, and I loved the passage on how the characters inherit or don't their parents' anarchism/politics. But I honestly wish the language had been a little more straightforward at times. Still thinking through how the story & style are co-constituted and whether I personally found it effective. I could be persuaded either way tbh.

[Bex]

can't believe i liked this so much but idk this book starts sucking on your fingers while ur reading my hands are all sticky now

[zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

more books about butches please 🤲🏼

[Hunter Julo · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It was easier they thought to be butch together. It wasn’t so different from being butch to a femme when anyway you were always being butch for somebody else. That’s not it exactly, it was that you were butch and that was that but the poses and fronts, the moves, that was the way you were butch for other people. It was the way the butchness came out of your body. Maybe it’d be through your eyes, or your scent, or the way you danced. There are all sorts of ways the body lets the inside of it leak out and Vic and all the others wanted it to leak out butch.”

Some of the most jam packed 150 pages I’ve ever read!! I went over most lines three or four times before I could move on to the next. A beautiful butch cacophony and a very cool approach to experimental formatting that created the perfect home for the characters inside.

4.5

[caja ⋆·˚ ༘ * · Rating 5 out of 5]

this took my breath away - no melodrama, i am being serious. take me seriously!!

there were multiple times while reading this book that i had to close it, and consciously breathe - breathe in the words on the page, let them fill me up - then reopen and read the words again and again and again. just so many sentences and phrases that i wanted to pick off the page and store away for safekeeping. i savored every bit of this. i never wanted it to end

[Chelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t want to say goodbye to the Friday night’s with the boys, but every book comes to an end. This was such an experience; I loved this book.

[Taylor (Virginia Woolf’s Actual Wife)]

I love butches.

That one did take me a while to get through because of the way it was written, but I love when books take risks. Be weird!

[Danielle]

very cool, very strange little book.

[Mollie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted so badly to love this but I just could not3 I typically love a strange structured book but I just could not follow this at all, all the characters blended in with each other and I struggled to remember who anyone was or what their deal, every so often there was a paragraph or two I could follow and I would love it, but by and large I really struggled and I had to force myself to finish it33

[Asha Sumroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spent a month driving round the middles of nowhere’s with this in my glove-box library like a lucky charm after picking it up in Glasgow, having quietly but eagerly awaited its publication like I was cruising it or something. Anyway, long-awaited acquisition aside, I sensed / hoped these pages might take me somewhere familiar but inherited but new but really old and all I can say is it’s the first time in ages I’ve had to use bottom corners to mark for myself where I stopped to take breath of like fucking shit oof.

Thanks for this fantastical tapestry of lines I’d like to live by. Thanks for new lyrics for being proud to be Jewish, trans, a dyke, a worker (The bread anddd the roses !!)

Thanks for piling words together in ways they were clearly always meant to be but haven’t been before. Huge props to nightboat for publishing what ought to be published !! Gassed

Can’t wait to lend it to people and let them see those bottom corner arrows so they know exactly where this book made me feel seen, feel hope, turned me on

[monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand why the author made the structural choices they did, but I don’t think they were for me. I was hoping for this book to really create an ambience of a 50s gay bar in my head, but the writing style pulled me out of the story more frequently than it pushed me in.
I also wish i’d have gotten to know the characters more, but every scene felt really repetitive and didn’t build their personalities at all. I understand that Lily is an anarchist, it’s stated at the beginning of the book. Give me more!!

[Elizabeth Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

“but maybe overflowing is a perfectly fine type of over” you’re joking!!! I hope all dykes and anarchists can sit a grand piano one day.

really fun and beautiful- reminded me of the Commitments (which I love) but nyc butch piano players in the 50s SO FUN but feel like I need to read twice to really grasp it all

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

avant-garde and sure to be a butch classic! a modern-vintage friday-night anarchist-pianist dyke-bar dream!

[Sarah]

quickest dnf of my fucking life

[Fiasco · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is set in the 1950's, but for me, the writing style made it feel like it happened today. I don't know how to explain it, but the way some characters were introduced or talked about, or the way that some problems were discussed just snapped me out of the timeline.
But in the end, what's the book supposed to be about? Lesbians in a bar. Lesbians are in bars today just like they were back then and this book does make you want to sit with them and talk with them, regardless of when it happened.
As someone who isn't an anarchist, the book didn't make me more interested in the topic, but it did bring up a few good points. Also, there were many interesting sentences and discussions that were carried on throughout the book, which I think has to be credited to the humour and writing style of the book. It worked for me, in the beginning, but in the end, it was hard for me not to rush through the pages. The book was nice, it didn't take long and so it was what I wanted.

[jo · Rating 1 out of 5]

sigh…. i really wanted to like this!! and i hate it when people say that in reviews!! however i can only see the word anarchist repeated so many times on a page before i start to loose my mind. i was mostly annoyed reading this book which is not a good feeling. i followed through as i could see the vision trying to be accomplished, and every once in a while there’d be half a page that really caught the rhythm and showed something really beautiful. but the whole book needed that and it was just a mess most of the time. i really am looking forward to Levene’s later work as i think she’ll get it right eventually, but this debut novel was often rocky.

[Laura]

I'm not going to give this a rating because that doesn't seem fair but this so was Not For Me. I love an experimental novel! I love a 1950s dyke bar! I love anarchists! Communism! Butches! But I do not love musical theatre. And frankly I think that was really preventing me from getting into this.

[ira · Rating 3 out of 5]

very interesting. Poets novels are hard for me. Kind of felt like it was tripping over it’s own feet

[Naiya Vasquez-Castaneda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Live laugh love Butch

[Melissa Braine · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75*

[Kate Millar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more than I did but unfortunately I didn’t really know what was going on a lot of the time- some sweet moments but an over all extremely confusing narrative structure

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

this wasn't that obtuse to read for me, despite the structure/writing style. kind of felt like it flows effortlessly off the page in a kind of wash of vibes, enjoyable, although maybe less resonant with me than I wanted it to be.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’m going to be so real i struggled with the style.

[Althea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to listen to the author read excerpts of their book and discuss it the night of finishing reading and hearing this book read aloud was really something else! This is a really experimental glimpse into 1950s butches, the bar scene, yiddish anarchists but was also so much more! I don't think a simple review could do this book justice, but the whole time I was reading it, I could not stop thinking about how much I love butch lesbians!

[LonelyPlanetBoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Greasepaint is everything. It’s not often a book feels so written for you, for those you’re in community with, for people you love. Greasepaint is a poem, it’s a play, it’s a love letter. It shakes everything out of you until you face yourself in the mirror. Greasepaint is a jazz rhythm on the page, it’s a butch anthem, it’s a relief. Come on in, take a seat, welcome to the bar, enjoy the music, enjoy the show.