Queenie

by Candice Carty-Williams

Another audiobook, narrated (awesomely) by Tamara Lawrence, whose accents and intonation totally match the diverse characters she is portraying.  The introduction says “performed by” and I think this is indeed a more accurate term than “narrated”, even though this is an audiobook and not a dramatisation.

I had come across this book once or twice in reviews, but sat up and took note when the author appeared in a TV retrospective on the ‘Bridget Jones phenomenon’.  I don’t mind admitting that I am a fan of the Bridget Jones films, which my husband and I watch together on a regular basis.  We are romcom junkies.  I’ve never been tempted to read Helen Fielding’s books, and admit to finding the original newspaper column uninspiring.  I think the reason for this has more to do with me than the author or content of the column.  Fielding and I are contemporaries, but our lives have taken different paths.  She was a 30-something ‘singleton’, hanging out with her friends, looking for the right man and feeling at times threatened by her married, childrearing contemporaries.  I was a mother of four young children, who had married young and started a family straight after completing my university education.  True, by the mid-eighties I was also pursuing a career.  You could say I “had it all”.  But a part of me was jealous of the freedom of the fictional Bridget.  And also exasperated with her – if she wanted a man so badly, she could just pick one and get on with it!

But I digress.  Candice Carty-Williams spoke intelligently and with humour in her few, brief contributions to the TV documentary about Helen Fielding’s work.  It made me want to read Queenie, and I was delighted to see that BBC Radio 4 had produced an audiobook of this title.

I can’t say much about the book itself without giving away the story.  Comparisons with Bridget Jones are rife, but this book is more than just a remake.  It is funny at times, but with real values and experience at its core.  Race features in all kinds of ways,  At the start of the novel Queenie, the granddaughter of migrant from the Caribbean, is on a ‘break’ from her white partner Tom after her enraged reaction to a racist comment made by his uncle at a family celebration.  Queenie’s grandparents and especially her fervently religious aunt feature heavily, and are real-life characters, not just caricatures.  Her difficult relationship with her mother is a backdrop to the story, which becomes more and more prominent as we learn how Queenie’s own relationships with men are shaped by her mother’s experiences.  Indeed these relationships are the most shocking part of the story, even if there is still humour here.  Queenie has the knack of entering into the most unsuitable relationships – or dalliances – and abuse is sometimes explicit, sometimes under the surface.

This is a thoughtful and, I think, important debut novel, and I look forward to reading more by this author.