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