carolhoggart's review
2.0
It's only a short book. I should have been able to finish it, but it just wasn't going anywhere so I gave it up at p.95 after battling it for a couple of weeks. It's a well-researched novel and the characterisation is vivid, but the story was just too amorphous to hold me, and the writing was not sufficiently beautiful to make up for the shapeless plot. Not that the writing was bad, mind you. It was elegant and occasionally quite funny, but I find that if prose is beautiful enough I simply read on to drink in the words.
The plot concerns Dr Samuel Johnson (of 18th-century literary fame) and his circle of friends - with a particular focus on Mrs Hester Thrale and her eldest daughter Queeney. The story progresses through a series of chapters, each set a year or two apart, the contents of which concern predominantly small happenings and interactions. It is beautifully detailed, but ... well, what is Bainbridge trying to do? I for one do not have the patience to find out.
The plot concerns Dr Samuel Johnson (of 18th-century literary fame) and his circle of friends - with a particular focus on Mrs Hester Thrale and her eldest daughter Queeney. The story progresses through a series of chapters, each set a year or two apart, the contents of which concern predominantly small happenings and interactions. It is beautifully detailed, but ... well, what is Bainbridge trying to do? I for one do not have the patience to find out.
dearbhla's review
3.0
This novel may possibly have had a greater impact on me if I knew anything about the life and times of Samuel Johnson apart from the fact that he wrote a dictionary, and of course that the Life of Samuel Johnson was written by Boswell. But I’ve never read it, and so am unfamiliar with Johnson, apart from the broadest of strokes. But while I may be lacking some of that knowledge I still really enjoyed this book.
We see a much different Johnson here than the one I’ve heard of, not a lot of genius showing, more depression and self-absorption.
The Queeney of the title is a child for much of the book, her mother and father have, in many ways, taken Johnson into their family and it is through this family, the Thrale’s that we see Johnson.
There are also letters interspersed with the story, Queeney’s written in adulthood to a cousin looking for information about Johnson. But the main part of the book is not specifically from Queeney’s POV, and this allows us to learn how wrong a lot of what Queeney thought about her mother Hester, was wrong.
This is an amusing little book, full of lines that’ll make you smile. Easy to read, and full of insights and interesting sentences. However, I never really got a sense of time from the book. The characters could have been from any era, not just that of Georgian England. Still, well worth a read.
We see a much different Johnson here than the one I’ve heard of, not a lot of genius showing, more depression and self-absorption.
The Queeney of the title is a child for much of the book, her mother and father have, in many ways, taken Johnson into their family and it is through this family, the Thrale’s that we see Johnson.
There are also letters interspersed with the story, Queeney’s written in adulthood to a cousin looking for information about Johnson. But the main part of the book is not specifically from Queeney’s POV, and this allows us to learn how wrong a lot of what Queeney thought about her mother Hester, was wrong.
This is an amusing little book, full of lines that’ll make you smile. Easy to read, and full of insights and interesting sentences. However, I never really got a sense of time from the book. The characters could have been from any era, not just that of Georgian England. Still, well worth a read.
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