by Nancy,
Welcome Ladies to our 100th book for our little book club!!!
Congratulations to us, so proud that from a few days in Greece many years ago we have managed to stay in contact and become firm friends.
Candince Carty- Williams’ Queenie was shortlisted for the Costa debut novel award and mostly I’ve read good things about it. Hilarious, funny and furious seem to be the words reoccurring most often in reviews.
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her..
A couple of other things to think about as we read
What were your first impressions of Queenie? Did you like her?
After a conversation with Darcy, Queenie thinks, "I wished that well-meaning white liberals would think before they said things that they thought were perfectly innocent" (p. 178). What does Darcy say that leads to Queenie’s reaction?
How does Darcy’s comment highlight the differences between Queenie’s and Darcy’s experiences?
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Hello Ladies,
ReplyDeleteSorry this took so long, I think was travel lagged!
Hello Ladies
ReplyDeleteA hundred books! That’s just amazing. Well done to us all, and especially you, Nancy – setting us up and keeping us going with wonderful backdrops and reminders about the need for new book titles. I can’t tell you how much the reading both of you have chosen has widened my rather limited horizons.
Not least this month’s book. Set in the U.K. it might be, but it reveals a life style of which I am in complete ignorance. I will have mentioned the Guardian newspaper before. Ms. Carty-Williams has very recently joined the paper as a book columnist. So I’m clearly going to have my eyes opened regarding reading recommendations.
Unfortunately, I was very critical of Queenie from the beginning. It was beyond me why it was so necessary to be in a relationship with a man; how one could so badly neglect one’s job; and how one could allow almost any man to be so invasive (physically and psychologically). On re-reading my criticism, I realized I sound like some extreme Me Too person. Looking up Me Too on the Net, I discovered the movement was created ten years ago by a black woman. (I have only Wikipedia’s word on this!) Still, it demonstrates the struggle black women in particular have identified as essential to their wellbeing – a struggle which is vividly demonstrated in Queenie’s and her mother’s relationships with men: destructive, violent and degrading.
In response to your question, Nancy, Queenie is shocked that Darcy seems to assume that a black man in America needed to be doing anything to be killed by the police. Indeed, “ . . . if the thinking is that someone should be killed for doing something wrong, that thinking is dangerous.”
Queenie’s and Darcy’s experiences in so many areas of life will be completely different. It’s clear in the relationships Guy has with Queenie and Cassandra how he treats ladies of different colour. Darcy can take for granted that in any difficulties with the police her citizens’ rights will be recognised. That is not always the case when the police are dealing with minority groups. Queenie’s childhood was dominated by a violent, thieving bully who has yet to be punished for his crimes. Well-meaning white liberals very often come from more secure, supportive families, and, like me, do not always fully comprehend the horror of the situations in which some people live.
I think questions concerning one’s identity, what one is doing in life and why, are ones we all have to answer. But do we? There are men and women I know who have not got round to considering an answer until very late in life. Then, it’s often a justification of what one has already done rather than an analysis of ‘the road not taken’. Perhaps because for many there was no other road to take. Poverty denied options to too many of the students I taught. The war limited my parents’ lives . . . complicated business.
It was only on realizing what had happened to Queenie and her mother that my attitude to Queenie began to change. Finally, I saw both women as very brave victims of an often aggressively racist society, and the minority culture into which they were born. I’m a bit slow sometimes!
Hope you and your families are both well, ladies, and that 2020 has begun well for you all. I hope, too, Nancy, that those bush fires are keeping their distance from you.
Love to you both
Hello Ladies,
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year!
Ivars and I have finally finished our epic road trip and Grace is settling into Brisbane life again. Hopefully all will be well and she’ll adjust to the change of pace. I think I’ve said it before but “bigger kids, bigger problems”, all we can do is keep on loving them and supporting them.
We have had some lovely rain here and some humid days so everything is beautiful and green again, I didn’t realise how much I’d missed green.
Firstly, I’d like to say about our book this month, I did not find it hilarious at all, so my faith in my review sources are very challenged. I did find it sad and enlightening and at times I was very frustrated with Queenie until like you Sue, we were given a deeper understanding of her past and why she was allowing the abuse to occur. I was quick to judge, I hope I’ve learned something from this.
I love reading books like this as I feel it gives me a little insight into the lives of people I really don’t understand. I can never really understand, I can only view things from my privileged position and be grateful to all the brave authors who share their stories.
I think stories like Queenie are so important in our world today as we seem to be constantly judging people different from ourselves and finding fault or trying to fix things without consulting the people involved. It reminded me how I felt when I tried to read Carpentaria a few months ago. I felt lost in a different world.
There were so many issues of race, abuse, sexism raised in Queenie, but I was glad in the end as well it was a powerful story of recovery and strength. So much stigma and pressure from society and family around mental health challenges and the need for help, I think this perhaps is pervasive through many cultures.
Hope all goes well with you and yours
Love Nancy
Hello Ladies!
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful thing! 100 books! I have enjoyed this journey with you both so much! I agree with your statement of our horizons being widened, Sue. Certainly many of your war novels I would have never touched on my own and yet was completely moved by them! Or Nancy’s wonderful choices set in the beautiful Australian outback! So many wonderful books we’ve read! Thank you both for these incredible reading experiences.
I was sympathetic to Queenie from the very beginning. Her character is pretty much the literary version of a dear friend of mine. The abusive male father figure, the absentee mother, the deep insecurities of bodily appearance, the poor sexual treatment from males were all excerpts from her life. As I read along, I felt like encouraging her just as I have done with my friend. I do fear though that some times during her struggles I was more like Darcy than Kyazike (although gratefully never like Cassandra!)
As you have both mentioned, we all sit in a different understanding of the world based upon our skin color. We have not met the struggles that individuals like Queenie face regularly. I have gotten some odd interactions with people when they match my Caucasian face to my Asian last name. I’m sure it is nowhere near what individuals like Queenie face but maybe it is a slight insight.
I found Queenie’s dark sarcasm and coping mechanisms to be a means for Ms. Carty-Williams to lighten the dark topics which is probably how critics labeled it as “hilarious”. I found these comments to be amusing but certainly not to the level of hilarious. All in all I did through enjoy this novel and read it very quickly.
Thank you for another wonderful read and I look forward to many more!
Katie.