It’s hard to say what separates a character in a novel that you absolutely fall head-over-heels in love with from those who you appreciate and like but are happy enough to leave behind, but one thing is certain – Queenie is very much the former and not even remotely the latter.
The protagonist in Candice Carty-Williams brilliantly-accomplished debut novel, aptly-named Queenie, she is a Brixton girl, the UK-born granddaughter of Jamaican grandparents, who suddenly find her dream life, or more pertinently what she thought was her dream life, falling apart at the seams.
Or more accurately, unravelling, each ball of metaphorical wool that she once held in her hands, tumbling from her grasp, unspooling in ways that she didn’t see coming and which she has no idea how to put back together.
Sounds grim? In some ways it is, because let’s face it hitting rock bottom and Queenie most definitely does, is never a happy-go-lucky romp in the park, but so gorgeously and refreshingly authentic, and self-deprecatingly funny, is she that you spend the novel laughing almost as much as you cry for her and the pain she’s going through.
She is, hands down, one of the most real, human and fully-formed characters you will ever meet in any book, a woman who is acutely aware not just of the personal demons she must face down but those that come with being a black woman in a society that still, even in the supposedly progressive 21st century, elevates all things white above any other cultural touchstones or concerns.
“I felt like the floor was whipped away from under my feet.
‘What?’ I said, not really grasping what was happening. I went to close the front door. As I did, I saw the woman opposite standing on her front step. She must think that I’m running some sort of twenty-four hour dramatic workshop from the house.” (P. 233)
For all the weight on her shoulders, some of it self-imposed but much of it placed there by her grandparents, mother and society, Queenie is amazingly tenacious and capable of bouncing back from all kinds of emotional and psychological attacks on her person … that is, until she’s not.
Carty-Williams brings Queenie undone in ways that will be familiar to anyone, and I mean, anyone who has come to the end of themselves and found nowhere near as much as much waiting for them as they thought.
Until we come undone, there is naive assumption that our ability to cope is an endless, fully-supportive string of possibilities; that all we have to do is figure out another way through and the way forward will be waiting for us, tools and wherewithall to see it through.
But what you find, as Queenie heartbreakingly does, is that when you’ve exhausted all the coping mechanisms you employed as a child to cope with trauma, and unwittingly carried into adulthood, there’s not a whole lot left to lean on.
That’s when like Queenie, who has a wickedly funny way with oneliners and pithily-observant commentary, you have to start again, ripping down your life as it stands and building it all up again.
Sound like fun? It’s not. Is it even remotely easy? Not on your life, and as Queenie, surrounded by family and friends who love her, including her born-again Christian aunt Maggie, close friend Kyazike (like Queenie, a black woman in an often unsympathetic white world), workmate Darcy and close acquaintance Cassandra, and even yes, her firebrand grandmother, grapples with her life collapsing around her, she is forced to confront all kinds of assumptions and expectations that form her life.
Well, her life as it is at that point.
For throughout Queenie, which is moving, insightful and wholly empathetic in ways that will make you weep in recognition (as well as laugh heartily; that happens way more than you might think), our lovable protagonist has to ask herself again and again whether who she is and and what her life has become is sustainable going forward and whether what she believes about herself, thanks to some searing childhood trauma, is even true.
That’s an overwhelming amount of deep diving going on there, intertwined with intensely-personal questions about what it means to be a black woman dating, working and fighting for what she believes in in a society that’s still uncomfortably white-centric, and you can’t help but feel for her every step of the way.
“I looked down at the cake and blew the candles out.
‘Did you make a wish?’ my mum said quietly, her voice cracking halfway through the question.
‘No. No point,’ I said, continuing to look at the cake. ‘I haven’t believed in wishes since I was a child.'” (P. 317)
What makes Queenie such an affectingly-rich read on just about level is how relatable Carty-Williams makes her titular character.
Whether in ways big or small, we’ve all been where Queenie is, where she’s going and where she’ll end up, and being a part of her journey is intensely, beautifully rewarding, even in the darker moments when she wonders if she’ll reclaim her life in any kind of recognisable form again.
Even more rewardingly if you’re the kind of person who wants to understand as much as you can about people who may not be culturally or ethnically like you, and if we want to end the division and hatred in the world, that has to be an urgent mission for everyone with a sound, beating heart, then Queenie is an illuminating lesson in how much we’re alike, and how much we’re not, and how both are entirely and understandably OK.
As a result, you leave Queenie wishing fervently that you could spend more time with this remarkable young lady who is brave and true to herself beyond words, but also more importantly aware of a world beyond your own, reminded again how we all struggle with this business of being human, but that it is different for each of us, depending on who we are, our cultural and societal influences, family, friends and our willingness to tackle the demons within.
Queenie is one those superbly well-written novels that will stay with you long after you have finished reading it, touching something deep within and leaving you glad, very glad, that you got to spend time with a young woman who is funny, brave, clever and vulnerable, and whose journey is so captivatingly raw, engaging and honest that you’ll wonder how you got by in life without knowing her.