According to Queeney
Beryl Bainbridge, 2001
De Capo Press
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780349114477
Summary
Bainbridge’s brilliantly imagined, universally acclaimed, Booker Prize-longlisted novel portrays the inordinate appetites and unrequited love touched off when the most celebrated man of eighteenth-century English letters, Samuel Johnson, enters the domain of a wealthy Southwark brewer and his wife, Hester Thrale.
The melancholic, middle-aged lexicographer plunges into an increasingly ambiguous relationship with the vivacious Mrs. Thrale for the next twenty years. In that time Hester’s eldest daughter, the neglected but prodigiously clever Queeney, will grow into young womanhood.
Along the way, little of the emotional tangle and sexual tension stirring beneath the decorous surfaces of the Thrale household will escape Queeney’s cold, observant eye. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 21, 1932
• Where—Liverpool, England, UK
• Death—July 2, 2010
• Where—London, England
• Awards—Whitbread Prize (twice); James Tait Black Memorial
Prize; David Cohen Prize for Literature
Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge, DBE was an English novelist. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996; she was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as "a national treasure". In 2008, The Times newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Beryl Bainbridge was born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby. Her parents were Richard Bainbridge and Winifred Baines. Although she gave her date of birth in Who's Who and elsewhere as 21 November 1934, she was actually born in 1932 and her birth was registered in the first quarter of 1933. When German former prisoner of war Harry Arno Franz wrote to her in November 1947, he mentioned her 15th birthday.
She enjoyed writing, and by the age of 10 she was keeping a diary. She had elocution lessons and, when she was 11, appeared on the Northern Children's Hour radio show, alongside Billie Whitelaw and Judith Chalmers. Bainbridge was expelled from Merchant Taylors' Girls' School because she was caught with a "dirty rhyme" (as she later described it), written by someone else, in her gymslip pocket. That summer, she fell in love with a former German POW who was waiting to be repatriated. For the next six years, the couple corresponded and tried to get permission for the German man to return to Britain so that they could be married. But permission was denied and the relationship ended in 1953.
In the following year (1954), Beryl married artist Austin Davies. The two divorced soon after, leaving Bainbridge a single mother of two children. She later had a third child by Alan Sharp, a daughter who is the actress Rudi Davies. In 1958, she attempted suicide by putting her head in a gas oven. Bainbridge spent her early years working as an actress, and she appeared in one 1961 episode of the soap opera Coronation Street playing an anti-nuclear proteste.
Writing
To help fill her time, Bainbridge began to write, primarily based on incidents from her childhood. Her first novel, Harriet Said..., was rejected by several publishers, one of whom found the central characters "repulsive almost beyond belief". It was eventually published in 1972, four years after her third novel (Another Part of the Wood). Her second and third novels were published (1967/68) and were received well by critics although they failed to earn much money. Seven more novels were written and published during the 1970s, of which the fifth, Injury Time, was awarded the Whitbread prize for best novel in 1977.
In the late 1970s, she wrote a screenplay based on her novel Sweet William. The movie Sweet William, starring Sam Waterston, was released in 1979.
From 1980 onwards, eight more novels appeared. The 1989 novel, An Awfully Big Adventure was adapted into a film in 1995 starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant.
In the 1990s, Bainbridge turned to historical fiction. These novels continued to be popular with critics, but this time, were also commercially successful. Among her historical fiction novels are Every Man for Himself, about the 1912 Titanic disaster, for which Bainbridge won the 1996 Whitbread Awards prize for best novel, and Master Georgie, set during the Crimean War, for which she won the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Her final novel, According to Queeney, is a fictionalized account of the last years of the life of Samuel Johnson as seen through the eyes of Queeney Thrale, eldest daughter of Henry and Hester Thrale; it received wide acclaim.
From the 1990s, Bainbridge also served as a theatre critic for the monthly magazine The Oldie. Her reviews rarely contained negative content, and were usually published after the play had closed.
Honours/Awards
In 2000, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). In June 2001, Bainbridge was awarded an honorary degree by the Open University as Doctor of the University. In 2003, she was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature together with Thom Gunn. In 2005, the British Library acquired many of Bainbridge's private letters and diaries.
Last years
Following what Bainbridge claimed was her 71st birthday (it was in reality her 73rd), her grandson Charlie Russell produced a documentary, Beryl's Last Year, about her life. The documentary detailed her upbringing and her attempts to write a final novel (Dear Brutus, which she decided to leave unfinished); it was broadcast in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2007 on BBC Four.
In 2009, Beryl Bainbridge donated the short story Goodnight Children, Everywhere to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the "Air" collection. Bainbridge was the patron of the People's Book Prize.
Bainbridge died on 2 July 2010, aged 77, in a London hospital after her cancer recurred. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Bainbridge has wrought a Johnson so intellectually scintillating and emotionally unpredictable that her novel becomes a study not so much of character as of the mysteriousness of character....[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
Dialogue and descriptions subtly and skillfully convey a sense not only of the period but also the personalities.
Merle Rubin - Los Angeles Times
A dark, often hilarious and deeply human vision ... a major literary accomplishment.
Margaret Atwood - Globe and Mail (Canada)
As she has proved time and again, most recently in Every Man for Himself and Master Georgie, few novelists now alive can match Bainbridge for the uncanny precision with which she enters into the ethos of a previous era. This time it is the period of Dr. Samuel Johnson, and the strange relationship he built in his later years with wealthy Southwark brewer Henry Thrale and his vivacious but moody wife, Hester. Some of it is seen through the eyes of Mrs. Thrale's eldest daughter, the Queeney of the title, but such is Bainbridge's virtuosity with points of view that she can move into Dr. Johnson's or Mrs. Thrale's heads at will. This brief novel for each scene is pared down to its essentials is more a sketch of a way of life and feeling than a full-blown narrative. The great lexicographer is brought to life more vividly than by any chronicler since James Boswell. We see him enjoying the Thrales' hospitality, indulging in mostly imaginary dalliances with his hostess and sparring with the likes of Garrick and Goldsmith. He accompanies the Thrales and their hangers-on on a European journey that is freighted with woe, and also proudly escorts them on a pilgrimage to his hometown of Lichfield. 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. If in the end the impression is more of a study in the difficulties of friendship and the ravages of time, the extraordinary craft more than compensates for a lack of narrative drive.
Publishers Weekly
In recent years, Bainbridge's novels have shifted from pure fiction to the ironic treatment of historical figures or events: The Birthday Boys (1991) considered Scott's Antarctic expedition; Every Man for Himself (1996), the sinking of the Titanic; and Master Georgie (1998), the Crimean War. Beginning and ending in 1784 with the death (and autopsy report) of Dr. Samuel Johnson, her latest work ranges over his last 20 years, when Hester Thrale, the wife of a wealthy brewer, was pivotal in his life a relationship that continues to interest Johnson scholars. The viewpoint is not exclusively "according to Queeney," Mrs. Thrale's precocious oldest daughter, but her caustic assessment matters. 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. For comprehensive collections of British literature. —Ruth H. Miller, Univ. of Southern Indiana Lib., Evansville
Library Journal
(Starred review.) The Grand Cham of 18th-century English letters is the primary subject of Bainbridge's majestically deft new novel: the best yet in her series of dazzling historical reconstructions of British history (Master Georgie, 1998, etc.). James Boswell's great "Life "gave us the partial lowdown on scholar-lexicographer Samuel Johnson's tenure as permanent honored guest of the family of prosperous Southwark brewmaster Henry Thrale—and the Great Man's courtly friendship with his host's charming wife Hester, a self-made bluestocking and the mistress of an ineffably fashionable salon that also embraced eminences like author Oliver Goldsmith and actor David Garrick. Bainbridge's conceit is that Johnson—a middle-aged widower (bereft of his much older wife) whose teeming brain waged continual warfare with his "lower' faculties—was both sustained and tormented by the sophisticated mixed signals emitted by the intellectually flirtatious matron, a fascination mirrored in his avuncular friendship with the Thrales' precociously gifted eldest daughter, the eponymous "Queeney." The latter's perspective on her mercurial parent's outwardly platonic relationships is conveyed in letters in which Queeney replies to a female acquaintance's importunate queries, some 20 years following Johnson's domination of her mother's circle. Testimony from several other characters (many servants) is skillfully integrated into the swiftly moving narrative, and Bainbridge also offers brief glimpses of Johnson's own tempestuous demeanor, dictated by his vulnerability to gout, depression, sudden and impulsive emotional outbursts, and the occasional "loathsome descent into sensuality." The tale is told with its author's customary masterly economy, graced by Bainbridge's tone-perfect imitations of period speech (even illiterate nursemaids speak—quite believably—like Jane Austen characters) and genius for suggestive imagery ("a glimpse of gray river beneath a rind of weeping sky"). Absolutely wonderful. Grateful thanks, too, to Carroll & Graf, which has stepped in where many "major" publishers have faltered, bringing us the otherwise neglected recent work of British masters like the late Anthony Burgess and the irresistible, indispensable Beryl Bainbridge.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for According to Queeney:
1. Why might Bainbridge have opened her novel with the autopsy of Johnson? Why not set that scene at the end? What was she hoping to achieve, do you suppose?
2. Elsewhere than in this novel, Johnson admitted that Hester Thrale "soothed 20 years of a life radically wretched." It is their relationship that is at the center of the book. What is the nature of that relationship? Would you say their attraction is based more on need than love (then again, are the two mutually exclusive)? What do the two need from each other...is one more needy than the other? In what way do they satisfy one each other...or do they?
3. How would you describe Hester? How is she revealed through Queeney's remarks?
4. What torments Samuel Johnson—physically and spiritually? Bainbridge hints at his sadomasochism. Where is it in evidence?
5. In Mrs. Thrale's Anecdotes, Johnson said that "Melancholy & otherwise insane People are always sensual; the misery of their Minds naturally enough forces them to recur for Comfort to their Bodies." What exactly does he mean...and do you agree with that observation? Can Johnson find comfort within his own body?
6. How do you account for the cruel letter Johnson wrote to Hester upon her soon to be marriage to Gabriel Piozzi?
7. How are the entries from Johnson's Dictionary related to the chapters they head.
8. Bainbridge strives to hold close to her source material without being obvious. Does she achieve that goal—is she able to meld the historical with the fictional? Or is there some awkwardness in writing?
9. What do you make of Queeney—one of the most intriguing characters in the book. (She has also intrigued Patrick O' Brian includes her in parts of his Master and Commander series.) What makes Queeney so interesting...and why is she such a difficult child, especially toward her mother?
10. The book's title is "According to Queeney," which suggests that we're getting a truthful picture of the great Samuel Johnson. That truth is based on a first-hand witness—who happens to be a young girl. Is Queeney's account objective? Is she to be believed, especially when some of her accounts contradict what comes before? What might Bainbridge be getting at regarding the fallibility of memory?
11. There are mysteries within this story. Point out some of the unexplainable events that take place...things for which there are no answers...and how Johnson struggles to maintain rationality throughout. What might Bainbridge be saying about the attempt to pin life down to some sort of scientific, rational exactitude.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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