Customer Reviews (1)

Beyond Johnson
Hester Lynch lived a life of quiet determination, married to an older man who treated her with little respect or regard. She still managed to provide a home that attracted the great Samuel Johnson. And yet, during this time she lived in the shadow of those with whom she developed friendships until the death of her husband.
Then she traveled and met a young Italian whom she married. This union brought her reproach from those she considered her friends, including Johnson.
This book is a well edited presentation of Hester's own writing.
While Boswell's work about Johnson is better known, Lynch Piozzi's is every bit as insightful, perhaps more so from having spent much more time and been the recipient of many conversations of a personal nature.

A quick and intersting read from Clifford. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
"Some writers are drawn to the historical novel but few have risen to the task more ingeniously than Beryl Bainbridge," declares the New York Times Book Review, and in her latest work of fiction Bainbridge again proves the singularity of the invention and genius that produced her best-selling The Birthday Boys and award-winning Master Georgie. Taking her inspiration from eighteenth-century English history and literature, Bainbridge transforms meticulous research into a brilliantly imaginative portrayal of the complex relationship that the renowned literary giant Dr. Samuel Johnson enjoyed with his benefactress, Mrs. Thrale. Mrs. Thrale, however, also has a daughter. Her name is Queeney, and it is through her keen eye that the unusual alliance between the great man and his lesser-known but equally fascinating friend is explored. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

deeply unpleasant characters
Certainly this is a well-crafted piece of historical fiction but populated with such a cast of selfish and unlikeable characters that I actually resented having to spend time in their company as the book progressed.

An impressive piece of writing but not an enjoyable read.Approach with caution.

Witness to history
Johnson died December 15, 1784.Acquaintances were willing to sit up with him.The Thrales had a mansion at Streatham.Johnson's presence drew others to the Thrales.The Thrales had a daughter.When Johnson visited the Thrales in a bad mood he lost his temper with Thrale's mother-in-law.Johnson's wife, Tetty, had been dead for ten years.

When Johnson was sick the Thrales went to fetch him.They gave him clothes worn by another of their guests.By her third year the pet name for their daughter was Queeney.Hester Thrale believed that Johnson needed her undivided attention.After four months at Streatham Park Johnson returned to his house in London weekly. Johnson lived at Johnson Court off of Fleet Street.Mrs. Desmoulins, Mrs. Williams, Frank Barber, and Dr. Levet were house mates.He came to regard Streatham as his real home.Johnson was subject to tics and mutterings.He claimed he knew almost as much at 18 as he did at 50.Queeney remembered Garrick, Goldsmith, Reynolds.Dr. Johnson had spoken of Queeney as a prodigy.Hester Thrale liked Johnson's strong convictions and roughness of manner.

The Thrale Brewery failed.Johnson and the Thrales visited Litchfield.Johnson said his father had lived in straitened circumstances.Mr. Thrale provided Johnson with a company wig.Johnson, the Thrales, and Baretti, the Italian master, traveled to France.Johnson caused them to spend many hours in dusty libraries.Marie Antoinette commented on the prettiness of Queeney.Johnson suffered from lack of ease because he was away from London.He said the French were silly.They had beggary and nobility.

The relationship of Hester Thrale and Johnson was that she needed an audience and he needed a home, Queeney contended.Johnson was variable in mood.He had a melancholy disposition.Following the death of her son Harry, Hester Thrale movedbetween the resorts at Brighton and Bath.Johnson was bored at both places.Queeney met Fanny Burney.For LIVES OF THE POETS Johnson said that he was not paid too little, he wrote too much.Sir Joshua Reynolds was Johnson's chief mourner.

Bainbridge has pulled off a real feat of reconstruction in this book.

An easy read, and a depressing one.
In reviewing "According to Queeney"[review excerpted above],Publisher's Weekly wrote: "...few novelists now alive can match Bainbridge for the uncanny precision with which she enters into the ethos of a previous era."

Uncanny?Yes. Very weird.Precise?I absolutely don't think so-unless you'd believe that 18th century upper-class people lived in a constant state of misery due to(among other things)clinical depression, sexual repression, religious fanaticism and/or hypocrisy, disease, and the lack of indoor plumbing.My main problem with this book is its unremitting unpleasantness, both of tone and character, and its rather superficial assumption that there's some kind of need to dispel an imagined rosy picture of "ye olden days" by swinging wildly in the other direction: a modernist, disaffected, determinedly downbeat view of humanity.
There isn't a single likeable person in the book, nor does anyone seem to escape either madness, disease, bitterness, selfishness, hate, gluttony, stupidity, addiction-or a combination of the above.It's one thing to make one's central characters complex, another to divest them of anything positive, save, supposedly, intelligence.An author runs a great risk-and takes on a huge responsibility-when she chooses to write a fictional "novel" using real people, places, and events.Perhaps it's just me, but I believe that she owes these onetime living, breathing people something better-at least, something a little more considered than simply using them as objects on which to hang some imagined psychodramas.Yes, Johnson was a strange man...that's hardly news to anyone who's read anything about his personal life and habits.As for "Queeney's" mother, longtime Johnson friend Mrs. Thrale, well, gosh, she must have been something more than the histrionic shrew Bainbridge makes to bulge, faint, redden, pinch, hit and kick her daughter, her husband, and her friend Johnson by turns.This was a woman who was wealthy, witty, and a very sought-after hostess and guest-and yet in this novel her life is an unending misery...somehow I tend to think that she was bit more complex than that.But everything-every scene, every inner thought-is made into a kind of creepy horror for these "characters"...in this "narrative", poor Johnson can't even show up from an errand buying treats for his beloved cat, Hodge[a real incident recalled, like much of the basis for this novel, by James Boswell in his "Life of Johnson"], without this simple act being given new shades of direst import by Bainbridge's pen: the paper bag containing the liver seeps and drips with blood...give me a break.It's a short book, easily read in one or two sittings.The author has done research, yes-all of it obvious and based on easily available sources, though not resulting in anything more amazing or unusual than can be found in a standard book on "life in Johnson's London"(there actually is such a title-and many like it).Finally, when you decide to write a novel with a couple of real-life geniuses as your main characters, you'd better be at least as witty as they were.Bainbridge isn't up to that task.

Esoteric subject brought to life by the talented Bainbridge
"According To Queeney (ATQ)", Beryl Bainbridge's historical fictional account of the last 20 years of Samuel Johnson's life, will appeal especially to readers who have some background of the subject but it won't shut out the rest of us who don't. Although Bainbridge parades her huge supporting cast of characters to readers with scarcely an introduction as if we're on first name terms with them, it doesn't take long for us to catch up...and we make the effort because after a slow start, we're intrigued as we read on. Bainbridge's disciplined, economical yet eloquent prose stimulates our curiousity and brings to life a subject the non-literary minded may justifiably consider esoteric.

ATQ doesn't seek to compete with Boswell's biographical masterpiece because it is fiction. What Bainbridge offers is a personal and intimate profile - warts and all - of a great lexicographer and an eminent man of letters who in his twilight years has become a sickly, strange tempered and eccentric old man. This profile is developed from his imagined life as a permanent house guest of Southwark brewer, Henry Thrale and his wife, Hester on whose emotional support he grows increasingly to rely. Through the eyes of young Queeney, the Thrales' eldest daughter, we observe the lifestyle of Johnson and the Thrales, how they behave, the fellow artistes they consort with and their meticulously organised travels to Europe. More interestingly, we detect the development of a curious relationship between the crotchety Johnson and his hostess, the unhappy and shallow Hester. Not quite "the story of unrequited love " suggested by critics, it is nevertheless a relationship founded upon mutual need and one that isn't in the least obvious or easy to discern. That it should end the way it did doesn't surprise. The story is also littered with incidents of spite, bitterness and petty jealousies among the servants in Johnson's own household as they compete for their master's affection. There is ironically a subplot of "unrequited love" in the story but not where you expect to find it. Queeney's voice is sour and reluctant throughout. She was a precocious child - that's why Johnson was so fond of her and became her Latin tutor - but the sentiment isn't especially reciprocated. Her letters as an adult to various Johnson researchers seeking corroboration and evidence reveal a less than enthusiastic friend, if ever she was one. What does that tell you about Johnson's success as an individual ?

ATQ is a quietly confident historical novel of Johnson's erratic life that will appeal to the literary minded, afficionados as well as those who simply love good writing. Bainbridge must be the most often shortlisted fictional author - ever - for the Booker Prize. She's earned her dues and played bridesmaid long enough. Let's hope she wins it some day. ATQ didn't make it beyond the longlist. More's the pity because so few contemporary writers today possess Bainbridge's virtues. With her, less is more.

Brilliant and Witty
Beryl Bainbridge is nothing short of a genius.Her According to Queeney is a witty and wonderful masterpiece and reveals a side of Samuel Johnson little seen.The focus of the novel is his friendship with the Thrale family, in particular, Hester, the wife and mother.The Queeney of the title is Hester's eldest, and very precocious, daughter.In the novel, Johnson is portrayed as brilliant, but difficult--moody, depressed, obsessed, the list goes on.Bainbridge's novel is witty--full of sparkling dialogue and wonderful prose.Enjoy. ... Read more