28: Queenie

A book by Candice Carty-Williams

If you search the term "chick lit" on Wikipedia, this is what you get: "Chick lit or chick literature is genre fiction which consists of heroine-centred narratives that focus on the trials and tribulations of their individual protagonists. The genre often addresses issues of modern womanhood—from romantic relationships to female friendships to matters in the workplace—in humorous and lighthearted ways."

In many (superficial) ways, Candice Carty-Williams's debut novel Queenie, released in 2019, fits perfectly into the genre. It tells the story of Queenie Jenkins, a twenty-five-year-old woman living in south London who enters into a string of ill-advised sexual relationships while on a break from her long-term boyfriend, Tom. She works on the culture section of a newspaper and has three best friends—Darcy, Kyazike, and Cassandra—who support her in numerous different ways. So far, so Bridget Jones.

And indeed, upon its release, Queenie was widely hailed as a "black Bridget Jones". But despite the broad similarities between Carty-Williams's book and Helen Fielding's 1996 smash-hit, comparing the two is a little reductive, exactly because Queenie is black. As Carty-Williams herself put it to Stylist magazine: "This book is naturally political just because of who Queenie is. She’s not Bridget Jones. She could never be." Queenie and Bridget Jones may well inhabit a similar world, but the way that world reacts to each of them is very different.

As is the way that world reacts to me. Because my world is, in many ways, superficially similar to that of Queenie. I live in south London, and spend lots of my time in the places she spends her time. As a result, Queenie was a novel I relished at once because its setting was so familiar to me. I also found it relatable because I'm fairly sure I, and the people I spend most of my time with, appear regularly in the novel, though not exactly in flattering ways. I am, or at least have been, one of the "men wearing colourful, oversized shirts [with] female companions wearing colourful, overpriced coats"at the trendy burger bar in Brixton Village that has replaced Queenie's favourite Caribbean bakery. I am also represented at one of the "gatherings [which] really are as simple as 'posh people and me'", where there is "a pile of wax jackets" by the door.

This surface level of relatability I think makes the commonplace racism Queenie endures all the more shocking because it's so credible. She is bombarded throughout the book with a litany of microaggressions from a string of white friends, colleagues, and acquaintances; and she is subjected to explicit racial slurs by Tom's family, from which Tom fails to defend her.

That is not to say that Queenie is a book all about race and racism. It's just that, unlike Bridget Jones (or me), the issue of Queenie's race is a constant presence in her life, and the lives of her British-Jamaican family.

That does not stop Queenie herself (or indeed, the novel) from being flawed, funny, exasperating, friendly, complex, smart, unreliable, and hugely sympathetic. From the moment Carty-Williams introduces us to her while "in the stirrups" at the gynaecologist, it is clear this is not a book that is going to be backward in coming forward. A lot happens to Queenie, much of it terrible, but plenty of it good. Carty-Williams guides the reader through the ups and downs of her spiralling heroine's life with great elan, and Queenie is never not compelling, timely, or provocative.