Book Review: Queenie

Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams

Much like its protagonist, this novel is bi-polar. Some of it -- especially the final couple of chapters -- is extraordinary. 

But too much of it is mundane or head-scratching. It's meant to portray a woman going through a tough period in her life, but sometimes you want to be like her grandmother and figuratively smack her upside the head and tell her to get her act together.

OK, perhaps that is cruel thought when discussing a book about a potential mental illness, an issue the book handles quite well. But you often see where Queenie is headed, and want to beg her to avoid the poor choices you know she is going to make. It's going to turn out badly -- you know it, she knows it; hell, all of England knows it -- yet she's going to play it through.

And yes, I recognize I am a man critiquing a woman's perspective, with all the limitations that entails. 

Queenie Jenkins is a young black woman of Jamacian heritage growing up in south London. A lot is changing in her life -- she's starting a new job, her white boyfriend is on the edge of dumping her -- taking a break, he calls it -- and her traditional Caribbean neighborhood of Brixton is undergoing gentrification. So she tries to muddle through by overreacting, underreacting, and looking to fill her loneliness with sex.

Queenie also tries to be a politcal activist. She expresses both sadness and anger at the number of black men and women in the United States and the United Kingdom who are being harassed and attacked by police. She tries, without success, to get her editor to give her assigments on the issue. She is an avid supporter of Black Lives Matter.

The book includes some decent arguments on these issue. But not near enough, and when they occur, they seem like afterthoughts.  They are few and far between, being overtaken by her chatter with her girlfriends, her poor decisions about men, her roommates, and her family problems. 

Perhaps I wanted and expected a more political book about dealing with what it's like to grow up as a black woman in London. Because I did get some of that. But I got more pesonal matters -- if you enjoy reading about those, go ahead and grab this book. It does have its strong points.

Overall, it just isn't -- to overuse a British phrase -- my cup of tea.