Hello Meltingpot Readers,
I must confess, I purchased the book Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams simply because I loved the cover. I love the color orange; I love the Black woman silhouette, and the very fly hairstyle. I know, I know, I judged a book by its cover and it could have turned out very badly, but luckily that was not the case.
The good thing about reading a book that you know nothing about, is that you have very little expectations going in. Admittedly, I remember seeing this book on some must-read lists, so I wasn’t diving in totally blind, but I truthfully knew nothing about the plot or basic storyline. As it turns out, Queenie is a book about a young, Black British woman who suffers a mental breakdown and over the course of the novel has to come to terms with the trauma in her life. Doesn’t exactly sound like lighthearted fare, right? The thing is, for the first third of the book, I felt like I was reading a Black Bridget Jones’ Diary.
So, Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-something aspiring music journalist who has recently broken up with her long-time boyfriend at the beginning of the novel. In order to get over her ex, Queenie engages in a bunch of causal hook-ups. The story is set in modern times with dating apps, group texts and office romances playing a large part in the plot. It took me awhile to get into the book because I’m not very interested in stories about millennials and their sex lives. But slowly Queenie’s behavior begins to look not like someone trying to get over an ex as much as it looks like someone who desperately needs professional help.
Candice Carty-Williams has crafted an engaging and thought-provoking story in this book. Queenie Jenkins is a character I haven’t seen much of in contemporary fiction; a young Black female professional struggling with mental health issues, but also, struggling with what it means to be a Black woman in the UK; a child of immigrants, and living two paychecks away from homelessness.
In other words, Carty-Williams is asking readers to decide if being a Black woman in a white society is enough to drive you crazy.
Or at least that’s what I got from the story. That being said, the book doesn’t feel preachy or heavy-handed. If one didn’t want to read into the social commentary about race and identity, it’s still a great story about the life of a young woman in London who learns to love herself.
As I stated above, it took me awhile to fall in love with Queenie, but by the end of the book I was cheering for her like she was an old friend.
Have any of you read Queenie? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Peace!
