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    According to Queeney
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    According to Queeney
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    According to Queeney
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    According to Queeney

    Written by Beryl Bainbridge

    Narrated by Lindsay Duncan

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    A wonderful, immaculately reserached novel that brings Dr Johnson, his friends and his times to life.

    Beryl Bainbridge’s novel is a masterly evocation of the last years of Dr Johnson, arguably Britian’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 choatic 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 3, 2013
    ISBN9780007519224
    Unavailable
    According to Queeney
    Author

    Beryl Bainbridge

    Dame Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) is acknowledged as one of the greatest British novelists of her time. She was the author of two travel books, five plays, and seventeen novels, five of which were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, including Master Georgie, which went on to win the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the WHSmith Literary Award. She was also awarded the Whitbread Literary Award twice, for Injury Time and Every Man for Himself. In 2011, a special Man Booker “Best of Beryl” Prize was awarded in her honor, voted for by members of the public.   Born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby, Bainbridge spent her early years working as an actress, leaving the theater to have her first child. Her first novel, Harriet Said . . ., was written around this time, although it was rejected by several publishers who found it “indecent.” Her first published works were Another Part of the Wood and An Awfully Big Adventure, and many of her early novels retell her Liverpudlian childhood. A number of her books have been adapted for the screen, most notably An Awfully Big Adventure, which is set in provincial theater and was made into a film by Mike Newell, starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant. She later turned to more historical themes, such as the Scott Expedition in The Birthday Boys, a retelling of the Titanic story in Every Man for Himself, and Master Georgie, which follows Liverpudlians during the Crimean War. Her no-word-wasted style and tight plotting have won her critical acclaim and a committed following. Bainbridge regularly contributed articles and reviews to the Guardian, Observer, and Spectator, among others, and she was the Oldie’s longstanding theater critic. In 2008, she appeared at number twenty-six in a list of the fifty most important novelists since 1945 compiled by the Times (London). At the time of her death, Bainbridge was working on a new novel, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, which was published posthumously.  

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    Reviews for According to Queeney

    3.5/5

    10 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I loved this short, sensitive book. Auntie Beryl wins again.
    • 2/5
      Could not see the point of it all. Well written but could hardly be called a novel. Would have preferred an actual biography.
    • 4/5
      Dr. Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer and English man of letters, became friends with the wealthy brewer Henry Thrale and his wife Hester, and lived with them at their country and London homes for seventeen years. What's known is that Johnson and Mrs Thrale had some kind of flirtation; it doesn't seem to be known how far that went. Queeney is the eldest daughter of the Thrales, who observes her mother, Johnson, and other goings on in the strange household. This book describes a various episodes during those years. People are always visiting, or going on journeys, or returning from them. The squalor, filth, and illness of the 18th century are described in detail.There's a lot of tension between Mrs. Thrale and Queeney, for no obvious reason except that Mrs. Thrale is a classic narcissist and Queeney defies her. Mrs. Thrale is constantly pregnant but nearly all her children die and she seems to care only for her son and for a daughter who died before the story begins. At one point a family friend reprimands Mrs. Thrale for giving Queeney so many tin pills for worms and for purging her so vigorously, and I'm all, wow, is this going to be Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy in the 18th century? Wild! but no.I'm not sure what to say about this books. It doesn't have a real story arc; there are various incidents described by an omniscient narrator, interspersed with letters from Queeney written years later that show her to be an unreliable source. If the stories the narrator tells us are true. If it has a them, it's unrequited love: Johnson's for Mrs Thrale, his houskeeper Mrs. Desmoulins for Johnson, Mrs. Thrale for her music teacher. Queeney for her mother.And yet, I liked it, and it stayed with me. That counts for something.
    • 4/5
      According to Queeney is another understated historical novel by Beryl Bainbridge. It is set in 18th Century London, describing the last 20 years of Samuel Johnson's life, particularly focusing on Dr Johnson's relations with Hester Thrale, and her daughter Hester "Queeney" Thrale.Compiling books on family members and friends was the fad of the day during the second half of the 18th Century, when the genre of biography was still taking shape. Parents documented the landmarks in the lives of their children in "Baby Books", "Children's Books" or "Family Books". Friends compiled "Table Talk Books" collecting facts and anecdotes about their friends and acquaintances. Samuel Johnson was the topic of several biographers, even during his lifetime.The most famous of Johnson's biographers is John Boswell. However, it is wrong to believe that Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is a reliable biography. The work is highly biased, in which Boswell is described as correcting Johnson's quotations and many other "facts". In effect, Boswell's Life is only a story or version of Johnson's (real) life. In other words, it is Johnson's life according to Boswell.John Boswell did not like Hester Thrale, who became one of Johnson's best friends during the last 20 years of his life. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is particularly concerned with the last 20 years of Johnson's life, but the episode with Hester Thrale is largely omitted. Was is jealousy? Certainly, there was an element of envy, and Boswell saw Thrale as a literary competitor, knowing that she was compiling her own scrap book on the life of Johnson.Hester Thrale kept a diary, referred to as the Thraliana, which she initially kept as a diary, but which, came to be her compilation of anecdotes on the life of Johnson. After Johnson's death, she published her correspondence with Johnson, together with this account in 1786 under the title Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. During the Last Twenty Years of His Life. Contemporaries of Samuel Johnson slashed the work as lively, though very inaccurate and artful. It was a disappointing, sensational account of Johnson life according to Hester.Hester Thrale's daughter, also named "Hester Thrale" nicknamed "Queeney" by Johnson, grew up becoming an intellectual diarist and literary correspondent in her own right. Like her mother, she corresponded with Samuel Johnson whom she had known as a friend of the family since her earliest youth, and with whom she was as close as an uncle. Her letters were not published during her lifetime, but were published in 1934 as The Queeney letters. Being letters addressed to Hester Maria Thrale by Doctor Johnson, Fanny Burney and Mrs. Thrale-PiozziIt is likely that Queeney, like her mother, beside her correspondence, kept a diary and compiled anecdotes about Samuel Johnson, but these were never published. Had the been compiled and published, they might have given us another glimpse of Johnson's life according to Queeney.Beryl Bainbridge novel According to Queeney can be read as this fictional version of Johnson's life. The novel reads like a biographical account of Johnson's life, with apparently very unremarkable. The narrative chapters are interspersed with letters by people requesting Queeney for biographical details about Johnson's life, which Queeney seems reluctant to give. In her position as a close friend of Johnson, also particularly spanning the last 20 years of his life, Queeney must have possessed a wealth of information on Samuel Johnson, a treasure, which, unlike her gaudy mother, she seemed very unwilling to share.Thus, Bainbridge's novel is a very understated biography of Johnson. Hardly worth reading.
    • 2/5
      This book is clearly an accomplished piece of work by an author with considerable powers, but it is not quite to my taste. I found the bawdiness and the general baroque style a little too rich.
    • 4/5
      'According to Queeney' is a triumph of style, inventiveness, and most importantly, honesty. It follows the life of Samuel Johnson, the writer of the first English dictionary, and his friends in late 18th century England. The story, I am told, is factually very accurate, although I'm sure a lot of the tales must have been at least doctored by Bainbridge. There simply isn't enough about the man and the society around him to cover every assertion made about him and the events in the book.The book is full of very interesting and well-drawn characters, from the irascible genius of Johnson himself, to the childhood prodigy Queeney, and her parents, who seem to love only other people. The dialogue sparkles as much as it honestly should. This is a compelling piece of historical literature, and I would recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in Georgian England.
    • 4/5
      The story of Samuel Johnson's relationship with Hester Thrale.
    • 3/5
      I read this because it was on the Guardian's 1000 books to read list; it was my first on the list. The writing was very formal and well constructed. I am not a history buff and so I felt adrift and ignorant. It was funny but I didn't like the story.
    • 4/5
      I had heard a lot of praise for this historical novel about the friendship between poet/critic/lexicographer Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale, so I thought I'd give it a try. Despite thte title, only some chapters are told from the point of view of Mrs. Thrales daughter, affectionately known as "Queeney" (or, to Johnson, "Sweeting"). The book was well written and researched, but, overall, I thought it was just OK. I listened to it in audio format; the reader, Miriam Margolyes, was perfect.