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This title in other formats:According to Queeneyby Beryl Bainbridge
Synopses & ReviewsFrom Powells.com: James Boswell's Life
of Samuel Johnson is one of the most well-renowned of all biographies, immortalizing
Boswell's mentor and hero Dr. Johnson. But there was a dark side to the good
doctor that his biographer chose to overlook, a side which the inimitable Beryl
Bainbridge grasped and chose to interpret. Her novel, According to Queeney,
is a dark, complex study of emotional dependency and the vagaries of marriage.
In the summer of 1766, after concluding the monumental task of writing the first dictionary of the English language and editing his celebrated edition of Shakespeare, Johnson, exhausted and depressed, suffered a breakdown. His friends Mr. and Mrs. Thrale took him into their summer home. He went on to become an overwhelming presence in their lives for the next twenty years. Mrs. Thrale became his friend and confidante, and, in fact, Johnson claimed it was Mrs. Thrale who "soothed 20 years of a life radically wretched." The novel is told mostly from the point of view of the Thrales' eldest daughter, Hester, the "'Queeney" of the book's title, who observes Johnson and her mother's complex relationship. As the novel progresses Queeney grows from a precocious infant to a haughty young woman, and while her testimony, which utilizes many verifiable facts and quotations, maintains a certain verisimilitude, it eventually reveals itself to be not wholly trustworthy. Bainbridge has done a remarkable job of entwining fact with fiction, and her protagonist, Dr. Johnson, has never seemed so multidimensional, at times as playful as a puppy and at others dark and perverse, all the while constantly doing battle with the demons that threaten his sanity. Georgie, Powells.com Publisher Comments:Some writers are drawn to the historical novel but few have risen to the task more ingeniously than Beryl Bainbridge," declares the New York Times Book Review, and in her latest work of fiction Bainbridge again proves the singularity of the invention and genius that produced her best-selling The Birthday Boys and award-winning Master Georgie. Taking her inspiration from eighteenth-century English history and literature, Bainbridge transforms meticulous research into a brilliantly imaginative portrayal of the complex relationship that the renowned literary giant Dr. Samuel Johnson enjoyed with his benefactress, Mrs. Thrale. Mrs. Thrale, however, also has a daughter. Her name is Queeney, and it is through her keen eye that the unusual alliance between the great man and his lesser-known but equally fascinating friend is explored. Review:"Bainbridge slyly puts readers at the same disadvantage as her characters, who are rarely clued in to the full picture; and this very constriction of viewpoint is what immerses readers so hectically in the lives and era of the novel. The result: Bainbridge never has to tell you where you are, because, by her own oblique and canny means, she has taken you there already." Michael Upchurch, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review) Review:"[Johnson] is a brilliant creation, and when, at the end of this luminous little novel, Ms. Bainbridge brings us to his end, we feel two losses simultaneously, the personal one and the loss to civilization." Richard Bernstein, New York Times Review:"[Samuel Johnson] is the primary subject of Bainbridge's majestically deft new novel: the best yet in her series of dazzling historical reconstructions of British history....Absolutely wonderful." Kirkus Reviews Review:"As she has proved time and again... few novelists now alive can match Bainbridge for the uncanny precision with which she enters into the ethos of a previous era.... The tension between the bizarre manners of the day and the unexpressed passions burning within is beautifully caught, and Queeney's skeptical commentary lends just the right distance." Publishers Weekly Review:"Latin tutor and family friend Johnson was gentle and kind to Queeney, but here the eminent man of letters is portrayed as slovenly, eccentric, unstable, and ill. Bainbridge's novel is interesting as an experiment in writing about a figure from the past, but the fiction is often submerged beneath the history." Library Journal Review:"Beryl Bainbridge's elegant, sombre novel sets out to recover the Thrales' Johnson, invariably obscured by Boswell's account of the undefeatable colossus of English literature....Bainbridge's Johnson is not Boswell's witty and rumbustious conversationalist. He is a tormented man, spiritually fearful and sexually guilty." John Mullan, The Guardian What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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