According to Queeney: A Novel (Paperback)

Uncanny? Yes. Very weird. Precise? I absolutely don't think so-unless you'd believe that 18th century upper-class people lived in a constant state of misery due to(among other things)clinical depression, sexual repression, religious fanaticism and/or hypocrisy, disease, and the lack of indoor plumbing. My main problem with this book is its unremitting unpleasantness, both of tone and character, and its rather superficial assumption that there's some kind of need to dispel an imagined rosy picture of "ye olden days" by swinging wildly in the other direction: a modernist, disaffected, determinedly downbeat view of humanity.
There isn't a single likeable person in the book, nor does anyone seem to escape either madness, disease, bitterness, selfishness, hate, gluttony, stupidity, addiction-or a combination of the above. It's one thing to make one's central characters complex, another to divest them of anything positive, save, supposedly, intelligence. An author runs a great risk-and takes on a huge responsibility-when she chooses to write a fictional "novel" using real people, places, and events. Perhaps it's just me, but I believe that she owes these onetime living, breathing people something better-at least, something a little more considered than simply using them as objects on which to hang some imagined psychodramas. Yes, Johnson was a strange man...that's hardly news to anyone who's read anything about his personal life and habits. As for "Queeney's" mother, longtime Johnson friend Mrs. Thrale, well, gosh, she must have been something more than the histrionic shrew Bainbridge makes to bulge, faint, redden, pinch, hit and kick her daughter, her husband, and her friend Johnson by turns. This was a woman who was wealthy, witty, and a very sought-after hostess and guest-and yet in this novel her life is an unending misery...somehow I tend to think that she was bit more complex than that. But everything-every scene, every inner thought-is made into a kind of creepy horror for these "characters"...in this "narrative", poor Johnson can't even show up from an errand buying treats for his beloved cat, Hodge[a real incident recalled, like much of the basis for this novel, by James Boswell in his "Life of Johnson"], without this simple act being given new shades of direst import by Bainbridge's pen: the paper bag containing the liver seeps and drips with blood...give me a break. It's a short book, easily read in one or two sittings. The author has done research, yes-all of it obvious and based on easily available sources, though not resulting in anything more amazing or unusual than can be found in a standard book on "life in Johnson's London"(there actually is such a title-and many like it). Finally, when you decide to write a novel with a couple of real-life geniuses as your main characters, you'd better be at least as witty as they were. Bainbridge isn't up to that task.

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ATQ doesn't seek to compete with Boswell's biographical masterpiece because it is fiction. What Bainbridge offers is a personal and intimate profile - warts and all - of a great lexicographer and an eminent man of letters who in his twilight years has become a sickly, strange tempered and eccentric old man. This profile is developed from his imagined life as a permanent house guest of Southwark brewer, Henry Thrale and his wife, Hester on whose emotional support he grows increasingly to rely. Through the eyes of young Queeney, the Thrales' eldest daughter, we observe the lifestyle of Johnson and the Thrales, how they behave, the fellow artistes they consort with and their meticulously organised travels to Europe. More interestingly, we detect the development of a curious relationship between the crotchety Johnson and his hostess, the unhappy and shallow Hester. Not quite "the story of unrequited love " suggested by critics, it is nevertheless a relationship founded upon mutual need and one that isn't in the least obvious or easy to discern. That it should end the way it did doesn't surprise. The story is also littered with incidents of spite, bitterness and petty jealousies among the servants in Johnson's own household as they compete for their master's affection. There is ironically a subplot of "unrequited love" in the story but not where you expect to find it. Queeney's voice is sour and reluctant throughout. She was a precocious child - that's why Johnson was so fond of her and became her Latin tutor - but the sentiment isn't especially reciprocated. Her letters as an adult to various Johnson researchers seeking corroboration and evidence reveal a less than enthusiastic friend, if ever she was one. What does that tell you about Johnson's success as an individual ?

ATQ is a quietly confident historical novel of Johnson's erratic life that will appeal to the literary minded, afficionados as well as those who simply love good writing. Bainbridge must be the most often shortlisted fictional author - ever - for the Booker Prize. She's earned her dues and played bridesmaid long enough. Let's hope she wins it some day. ATQ didn't make it beyond the longlist. More's the pity because so few contemporary writers today possess Bainbridge's virtues. With her, less is more.

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