Queenie
By: Candice Carty-Williams / Narrated By: Shvorne Marks
Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
Dunno when I’ve listened to a less likable heroine…
Yup. I’ll just say it: I could not STAND either Queenie, the young Jamaican British woman, or Queenie, the vastly overrated book by Candice Carty-Williams. Tho’ Shvorne Marks narrates this so well, to the point where her accents were so thick and believable that my mom had to chuff off the audiobook and get the print instead, I must say she narrates this a tad tooo well. I mean, when Queenie whines, Marks whines; when Queenie freaks out and bitches nonstop, Marks does a freaked out nonstop bitchy voice; when Queenie gets squealy and manipulative? You betcha: You’re gonna feel like someone’s just squealed your head off, wheedling and manipulating you the entire time. So, brava! Ms. Marks.
Don’t believe the reviews that say the book addresses serious issues in today’s world. Nah, they’re brieeefly touched up cuz Queenie keeps wanting her all-white personnel newspaper to do articles on issues concerning race, gentrification, police brutality. She keeps bringing the ideas to her, she cynically notes, white supervisor and keeps feeling like she was discriminated against because the ideas go nowhere. Uhm, it’s not that, Queenie. It’s just that you didn’t come in with anything concrete, no talking points, no structure; you didn’t even phrase yourself well. Of COURSE it’s going to go nowhere fast. Plus, all these serious issues are just things Queenie screeches about, whines about, bitches about, and while she does indeed have to deal with the day to day racist comments and actions by white liberals, for the most part: The only thing taking Queenie down is Queenie herself.
So get ready for a lot of that. Queenie’s white boyfriend (Please note that it’ll be white men doing all the bad things throughout this book as Queenie refuses to date a black man. Wait… Did I say “date”? I mean, she’ll only have nameless, degrading, often violent, DEFinitely unprotected, sex with… white men…) tells her he wants a break from their relationship, and she spends almost the entire book whinging about it all, even tho’ her memories are of his racist family members. And she’s not self-aware enough to notice that her other memories of the two of them together are of her bitching at him and calling him racist. He’s pretty feckless; but racist he is not. Oh wait again: Everybody and everything is a slap at her.
Add to that, there’s no lightness of spirit here, and the humor falls flat as Queenie spirals deeper and deeper into mental illness and grossly self-destructive behavior. Uhm, I actually could get behind that. Mental illness is a serious issue—yes, she does make horrible mistakes over and over and over (And OVER!) again rooted in that, but it turns out she was just a silly, self-absorbed person before her struggles. That whining about her job? Well, it’s not about it being a hostile work environment; it’s the fact that she doesn’t do any work, doesn’t even stay at her desk, that she even holds up other people from their own work because all she wants to do is chatter about men, sex, sexually transmitted diseases, at the water-cooler. Jeeps! I’m sooo glad I work the graveyard so I don’t have to be around people like that… uhm… that I don’t have to be around PEOPLE (There are two mighty fine homeless cats though).
This is a book that you should NOT read if you’re newly single. I read one reviewer touting it as tonic for the lovelorn. Yeah, if the lovelorn want to slit their wrists and bleed out drop by drop, maybe. This should only be listened to by people who want to hear about cheap sex with many, many men; people who want to learn how to be a financial barnacle on other people all whilst whining about how mistreated they are even after siphoning money off; people who want to hear about a group of women who are ALWAYS there to support only the one individual (Queenie calls them “the Corgis” because to her, they are there solely to support the queen. Really, that right there made me wanna backhand her); and people who wanna hear about her finally seeking therapy, having it all rushed through, with everybody coming together at the end to celebrate just what an AWEsome person she’s become. Like in the last bit of an almost 10 hour audiobook.
Puff puff puff
I know I’m leaving a lot out, but I disliked it so much that I’d better stop here. My poor mom picked this out for our audiobook review club and what, between this and Baldwin’s Another Country, she thinks my sister and I believe her to be all into sexual freakiness.
Don’t make the mistake my dear mom made and go by the Publisher’s Summary. This is NOT an irreverent jaunt by an irreverent young woman, and it doesn’t tackle fierce issues of the day. All it has going for it is Shvorne Marks as narrator and… and… and…?
Hmm… Well, okay. It has Shvorne Marks…
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