Among the many things I have learned about Beryl Bainbridge this week is the fact that halfway through her writing career she suffered badly from writer's block, and beat it by turning from semi-autobiography to history as the basis for her novels. Thence came Young Adolf (Hitler in Liverpool), a Victorian murder (Watson's Apology), the Titanic (Every Man for Himself), Scott's Antarctic expedition (The Birthday Boys) and the Crimean War (Master Georgie). According to Queeney, published in 2001, was the last completed novel in this series, though her almost-finished and posthumously published Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress deals with the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
The beautiful painting on the cover of According to Queeney is by Joshua Reynolds, and it shows the two main female protagonists of the novel, Mrs Hester Thrale and her daughter, also called Hester but always known as Queeney. Really, the story is mostly about Mrs Thrale's relationship with Dr Samuel Johnson, or perhaps more properly Johnson's relationship with Mrs Thrale.
If you click Queeney's link above, you will get to a Wikipedia article which claims that Queeney is the narrator of According to Queeney, but that is not so. Queeney is certainly a central figure, and there are letters from her (to Laeititia Hawkins and Fanny Burney, possibly authentic?) dotted through the text. But most of the novel is narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, though Queeney's point of view is much in evidence. Another of BB's interesting, quirky girls, Queeney is a prodigy and recognised as such by Johnson, who pays special attention to her and to her education. But Johnson's passion, unexpressed and perhaps unrecognised even by himself, is for Mrs Thrale, who, however, appears rather undeserving of it. Trapped in a loveless marriage with the frequently drunk and compulsively eating Henry Thrale, Hester certainly has a fondness for Johnson and takes him into her home for long periods. Somewhat cool and unreliable, Hester is an unsatisfactory mother to her many children, and Queeney, though not in fact her favorite, gets special attention perhaps only because of Johnson's liking for her.
To write a novel about someone as well-known and well-documented as Johnson could appear to be courting disaster. However, Bainbridge makes the most amazingly impressive job of it. Johnson's habits, personal life and above all conversation have been painstakingly recorded by several of his contemporaries, including Hester Thrale and of course James Boswell. But you really feel, when reading this, that Bainbridge knows him at least as well as any of them. He is an extraordinary figure, wise and childlike, devout and guilt-ridden, troubled by the 'black dog' of depression, and totally unpredictable. Although viewed with some suspicion, he was generally much loved in his day and I don't think anyone who reads this novel could fail to love him now.
I was really impressed with this novel, but I loved it less than any of the others I've read, and that includes the next one I'll be reviewing, Every Man For Himself.
