Product Description

Beryl Bainbridge's latest novel is a masterly evocation of the last years of Dr Johnson, arguably Britain's greatest Man of Letters. The time is the 1770s and 1780s and Johnson, having completed his life's major work (he compiled the first ever Dictionary of the English Language) is running an increasingly chaotic life. Torn between his strict morality and his undeclared passion for Mrs Thrale, the wife of an old friend, ACCORDING TO QUEENEY reveals one of Britain's most wonderful characters in all his wit and glory. Above all, though, this is a story of love and friendship and brilliantly narrated by Queeney, Mrs Thrale's daughter, looking back over her life. A few of Johnson quotes: *Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures *No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money *When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #145233 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 260 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In According to Queeney, a bold, often ribald and moving invention, Beryl Bainbridge takes the extravagant figure of Samuel Johnson, 18th-century scholar and wit, and brings his last 20 years to rumbustious life through the blunt and mocking observations of his mistress's firstborn daughter Queeney.

Hurtling her readers into small and great events in the company of Garrick and Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney and Boswell, the years spin by. Johnson's wearisomely quarrelling household in Johnson's Court draws him increasingly to the sublime excesses of Streatham Court, presided over by his adored Mrs Thrale (whose wifely duties include poultices to testicles). This odd ménage is gossiped about and gawked at as child births and deaths, comeuppances and flirtations, swallowed buttons and skirmishes on staircases reveal as well as obscure unpalatable shifts of affection to the ageing Johnson and the composed but outraged Queeney.

Bainbridge's handling of the troubled, demanding and contrite Johnson and of Queeney, first as child observer and then as reluctant adult correspondent, are especially vivid, quirky and captivating. And this creation of sheer delight is underlayed by a delicate attention to the vulnerabilities of the human heart. --Ruth Petrie

Review
'A stellar literary event. written with panache & an enviable economy.the biggest risk of her literary life' Margaret Atwood *'This is a small, wise book of small prose miracles. It is a larger miracle in this way: it makes us feel we see Johnson & his friends in unexpected & unfamiliar ways which are nevertheless convincing and authentic. I did not think anyone could do this, & still have no idea how Bainbridge pulled it off' Andrew Marr, Daily Telegraph

Queeney was Hester Thrale's eldest daughter, and Hester Thrale's house was where Samuel Johnson found a home-from-home for many years. Considering the motley bunch of sad cases to whom he gave shelter in his own house, and the comfort of the Thrale establishment, it was little wonder. Bainbridge is scrupulous in her depiction of the details of contemporary life, and of Johnson's own life. Johnson was a complex man. He had married a widow twenty years older than he was, with a fine bosom and a bank balance. After her death, which he managed not to attend, he always said he had loved her desperately. So how did Mrs Thrale feature in his sexual life? When we read of a padlock and chain which he entrusted to her, and a letter from her telling him not to quarrel with his governess for not using the rod enough, our sophisticated 21st-century minds leap to an obvious conclusion. But are we right? Johnson had 'insane imaginings' about fetters and manacles', but they may have been part of his fear of madness, rather than a sexual ambition. We don't know: and with great skill, the author leaves us to wonder. Bainbridge's achievement lies in the bringing to life the most incredible characters of their worlds. The highlights she adds to her crowded canvas are masterly, and the device of framing her narrative in a series of letters written long after the events they concern succeeds brilliantly. (Kirkus UK)

From the Publisher
“Johnson with his lumbering gait, tics and mutterings, and wig charred by candle flame, is one of the great pleasures of the novel … Bainbridge hasn’t produced an indifferent, let alone bad, book for years. However, I’d be willing to bet that in the final analysis According to Queeney will be up there towards the summit of her achievement. Never mind the fickle-hearted Booker juries, this one’s a winner on its own merits” Mark Bostridge, The Independent on Sunday

“Deftly brilliant … Her novel may be called According to Queeney, but it is Bainbridge’s unique and acute slant on life, and death, that everywhere transforms it into the slim, packed masterpiece it is” Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

“This is a small, wise book of small prose miracles … It is a larger miracle in this way: it makes us feel we see Johnson and his friends in unexpected and unfamiliar ways which are nevertheless convincing and authentic. I did not think anyone could do this, and still have no idea how Bainbridge pulled it off” Andrew Marr, Daily Telegraph

“Beryl Bainbridge has written many remarkable novels, but none to equal this … Extraordinary. It is as good in its very different form as Boswell; it is even a necessary companion-piece to Boswell” Allan Massie, Scotsman “These real people are superbly recreated in fictional form … Bainbridge’s characters inhabit a world of perpetual farce, punctuated by confusion and misunderstandings. In her hands, bizarre behaviour is made to seem natural. The result is bittersweet; one would laugh if one did not also feel so acutely their pain … Bainbridge’s spare prose is perfectly suited to her purpose, conveying an immediate sense of experience, in the muddle and intensity of the present. This is a highly intelligent, sophisticated and entertaining novel, which requires reading more than once to appreciate its complexity” Adam Sisman, The Observer

“The grimmest but also the funniest book Bainbridge has written (it’s a mixture of Hogarth and Candide)” Jane Gardham, The Literary Review

“Bainbridge has met an ideal subject … her boldest adventure so far” Independent

“Its subjects - guilt, passion, misunderstanding and suffering - are those she has addressed throughout her career, sometimes as comedy, also as tragedy but never as perfectly as in this book. Few of us are as selfish as Mrs Thrale, and fewer still as wise as Dr Johnson, but in describing them, Bainbridge illuminates human nature” Amanda Craig, Daily Express

The character created by Bainbridge is entirely believable in all his contradictions … Poignant, pierced with truth, According to Queeney reaches into the dustier realms of history, bringing vividly to life a group of remarkable personalities with all their frailties, absurdities and cruel sensitivities” Kate Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph

“Bainbridge is wonderfully subtle on the sad, attritional, secretly tragic process of life” Anne Haverty, The Irish Times

“Bainbridge is brilliant at combining established fact and compelling fiction, the one deftly underpinning the other” Liza Picard, Daily Mail

“It is a compliment to Bainbridge’s skills that her novel … will send at least some readers to the very sources that she has mined” Guardian

“Bainbridge belongs to that rare group of writers (Ackroyd, Fowles, Golding) who can recreate the past with such astonishing accuracy that the reader trusts, and therefore becomes completely involved in, their fictional worlds … Samuel Johnson in particular, although not immediately likeable, grows into a richly woven character … We can probably forgive him his observation that ‘Scotland is a vile country’ such is Bainbridge’s talent in bringing him to life” The Herald

"Ms Bainbridge has wrought a Johnson so intellectually scintillating and emotionally unpredictable that her novel becomes a study of not so much character as the mysteriousness of character ... [Johnson] takes charge of Queeney's education and makes moral and aesthetic pronoucements that, while mostly invented by Ms Bainbridge, are so brilliant that Johnson, could he read this novel, might wish to make truly his own ... He 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 civilisation." New York Times

“A magical combination … old-fashioned entertainment at its best” Image Magazine

“Bainbridge makes newly fascinating the man and the period in which he lived” Metro

“Thought-provoking and bleakly beautiful … brilliant … Bainbridge has shown herself to be working at the peak of her form” Mail on Sunday

“Wonderful … Bainbridge’s greatest achievement here is to make what is most evanescent in history, the body, live again” Giles Foden, Waterstone’s Quarterly Magazine

“Vintage Bainbridge” Lizy Buchan, The Times

Customer Reviews

Baffling but enjoyable
This was an enjoyable, well-written but ultimately baffling book. It seems like it might have been an experiment to see whether it's possible to write about Johnson in a 'Johnsonian' way i.e. digressive, moody and episodic; if so, it works pretty well. If not, then I'm a bit stumped.
Like a number of Bainbridge's other excursions into historical fiction, like Master Georgie or the Birthday Boys, one is left wondering why the author chose the particular times and characters she's writing about; she doesn't seem particularly close to them; nor do they act as universals, so oddly do they behave. Still, she's a great writer of sentences. Some of them still go on ringing through my head weeks after reading them.

Well researched
Bainbridge has researched her subject well - I came away feeling that I had learned something about the characters of a number of famous names - James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney, etc. However, the tale itself felt disjointed at times with the technique of switching between centuries (Each chapter is interspersed with a letter from the older Queeney, looking back on her family acquaintance). Johnson himself seemed an improbably unattractive character in temperament for a much courted lady to be chasing. In fact, most of the characters have very few endearing features.

It was a pleasing enough book, but not as enjoyable as I thought it could have been.

Some interesting passages but ultimately disappointing
From the description on the back cover and extracts of reviews inside, I had high hopes of this book as a work of fiction based on real people and events from the late 18th century. In the event I found it rather dull. Characters appear without any attempt to explain who they were. Some of these are well known historical figures but in other cases it took most of the book to find out vaguely what their relevance was to Johnson's life. This would be fine for a reader who is an expert on Johnson, but for someone without that knowledge it was tiresome. A more serious criticism is that the book is a series of vignettes based on the last 20 years of Johnson's life and as such lacks a compelling story. I finished the book feeling that I had gained a little insight into the social history of the way Johnson and his friends lived, but not much else.