So I've read Queenie at least twice, and sometimes I'll listen to it at the airport or on roadtrips. I keep coming back to it because it comforts me, makes me laugh, and helps me to cry.
Its plot is familiar: woman in her mid-twenties (Queenie) flounders through relationships, work, and friendships. The story is differentiated in part because of its specificity and thoughtful exploration of intersectionality: being a dark-skinned, curvy black woman of Caribbean descent in London, navigating race, being the grandchild of immigrants, interacting with toxic men, and trying to find one's footing in patriarchal and racist workplaces.
What I love about this story is its masterful understanding of character. Queenie is such a well-developed, complicated, and lovable character. She's a disaster, but she's smart and funny. You'll relate to her, root for her, and cry for her as she blunders through some really complicated challenges. As a black reader, I love that Queenie gets to be imperfect and vulnerable throughout the story. The story holds her accountable for her bad choices and mistakes, but also understands that Queenie is confronting racism and sexism and a culture that doesn't care about people outside the dominant culture.
I also loved Queenie's Jamaican family, her best girlfriends, and the story's setting. If you binged watched the show Insecure and are looking for something similar, you can find it in this novel. It deserves more praise than it got, and to have been nominated for the Woman's prize or a Man Booker. It's really well-written and it's the kind of book that will remind you why you love reading, and why you're a people person after all.
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Popular Highlights in this book
Instead, I was met with what I’d been trying to pretend hadn’t always been a room full of white not-quite-liberals whose opinions, like their money, had been inherited.Highlighted by 493 Kindle readers- Is this what growing into an adult woman is—having to predict and accordingly arrange for the avoidance of sexual harassment?Highlighted by 373 Kindle readers
- “It’s constant, with you. It’s too much,” Tom said, his voice cracking. “You’re too much, Queenie.”Highlighted by 179 Kindle readers
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Queenie - That she was!
It started off slow and as the climax approached things started to spice up with intensity! Although I love how chaotic the book started because it gave you burial honesty allusion of where she was in her life! It gives us the point of from her grandparents, friends, ex, work associates, and casual partners of her Of how they felt was best die Queenie during time of heartbreak! You can never know tell someone how to get over something so mind driven, but you support and listen which Queenie just didn’t necessarily have in the WAY she thought she would without being judged! Her culture, her environment didn’t always match up but she had to find her way !
Top reviews from other countries
Maria Clara Peixoto Batista
O caos dos 20 anos
Reviewed in Brazil on February 3, 2024
