About this title: Samuel Johnson is the star of Beryl Bainbridge's novel, but his tale is told by a girl named Queeney, the oldest daughter of Mrs. Thrale, Johnson's wealthy friend (and the woman he unrequitedly loves) whose country house, Streatham Park, he sometimes shared. ACCORDING TO QUEENEY was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize and was a New York Times ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Fine Like New, Unread, not previously owned. May show signs of wear including remainder marks or stickers on book or cover. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 224 p. read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, lightly read, some shelf wear to cover, light creases on spine, light slant to book, stk #2214s7. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 224 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. Some rubbing on nice dj; fine cover; solid spine; remainder mark bottom edge of otherwise clean, unmarked pp; NOT a book club; a nice copy. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780786707737ISBN:0786707739
Description: A former library book with the usual identifiers in a protective glossy dust jacket covering. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Little, Brown & Co. (UK) Ltd
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780316858670ISBN:0316858676
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780786707737ISBN:0786707739
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. HARDBACK, x-lib w/ markings, mylar dj over original, clean pgs, Shipped in bubble mailer unless it is a real expensive item. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"Does for Johnson what The Master does for Henry James, i.e. bring to life a seemingly staid character entrenched in literary history, showing him in his daily life and human interactions, his uncertainties, hopes and fears. Many touching moments, and it's a very short book too. You don't have to be a fan of Johnson to get pleasure from it. Sometimes humorous and often whimsical. I think the portrait of Queeney on the cover of my copy is poignant too. She looks bright-eyed and mischievous and full of life, and half mocking the formality of the sitting."
"This is the second Beryl Bainbridge novel I've read, and I know I'll be reading many more. Because she writes in historical settings and, at least from what I've seen, about very English characters, one has to be willing not to have every detail and reference at hand while reading. One has to be willing to read up at least a little on the central characters (in this case, Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale) or the central even (in Master Georgie, it was the Crimean War) to best appreciate the nuances of the story, though not to understand the story itself. Other writers might take two or three times as many words to tell the same story, but Bainbridge is careful and spare in her choice of words, making her unusual in the world of historical fiction. To my mind, it also makes her superior.
While the historical backdrop is important, but it merely provides the framework for what Bainbridge does most brilliantly, and that is to grant the reader multiple viewpoints on the same events through the eyes of several key characters. The result is that one comes away with a fuller understanding of the story than do any of the characters, while at the same time gaining insight into the pervasive effect of subjectivity in interpreting one's life. None of Bainbridge's characters, no matter how brilliant or how practical, escapes influence of their subjective interpretations of events. To some degree, even the reader is implicated, because the revelations of these varying interpretations come about by degrees, so we are spared a tedious omniscient narrator's view of the characters and events. Bainbridge's doubled and sometimes tripled views of events emerge slowly over the course of the novel, and the insights are all the more rewarding for the delay and the reliance on the reader's memory to fill in the gaps.
The plot of the book is much less important than the manner in which events unfold. In short, the novel covers primarily the twenty-year period in which Samuel Johnson was an intimate friend of Henry and Hester Thrale's. But as Bainbridge is a psychological novelist masquerading as a historical novelist, the real story takes place in the characters' relating to one another and revealing the passions, desires, and fears that drive them."
"So this is everything you want to know about Samuel Johnson and more. The research is meticulous - things I thought were fictitious turned out to be based solidly in fact. The novel took me into an era I knew only in the vaguest terms."
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