If you haven’t heard of Queenie yet, where have you been? Candice Carty-Williams’ first novel debuted at number two on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Its instantly iconic, brightly coloured covers can be seen all over social media and IRL (since reading my fuschia copy, I’ve seen three people on the tube and two at the park reading theirs). It’s just one of those magical book events: a story so exciting, so timely, so desperate to be told that it resonates with readers immediately.
Here’s the premise: Queenie Jenkins is a fiery, flawed, deeply likeable character. We meet her as her heart is breaking and we listen as she tries to put herself back together, one ill-judged shag at a time. She moves in with her grandparents, tries to wallow in the bathtub, starts therapy and relies on her friends to remind her who she can be. Hers is a love story, just not the one you’re expecting. I won’t say too much, but spending time with Queenie is hilarious and devastating, comforting and frightening. It is a relevant, poignant account of what it’s like to live, love and date as a young, black woman. Probably my favourite thing is that she adds her three best friends to a WhatsApp group against their will and calls them her “corgis”. It’s heaven.
We caught up with Candice to find out how it feels to see her work celebrated, how much inspiration she got from her own life and how important it was to her to write a black protagonist.
Everyone’s talking about Queenie at the moment. How does it make you feel, to hear people rave about your book?
It feels very odd, and I still can’t quite believe it, if I’m honest. To be a young black woman who didn’t go to Oxbridge, didn’t have any helping hands, but to have a commercial novel published at all that debuts at number 2 in the Sunday Times bestseller list? Very mad. I am proud of myself, I think? Because I put in the work and trusted the process and am grateful that all of those late nights and irritating edits have paid off.
How much of your own life and your friend’s lives did you use for inspiration in the book?
Enough for me to be able to have a base for what Queenie’s world might look like, and who the people within it might be. It was vital that Queenie, like me, had a group of friends from different backgrounds who were all engaging enough to be standalone characters, much like my friends; one person whose story of a bad date I used pretty much word for word is my best friend Isabel (whose Ugandan name is Kyazike). She’s always been such a force in my life and I’ve always wished that she had her own platform so that people can see the world the way she does. In terms of my own life, I’ve had a lot of bad dates and I’ve met a lot of well meaning white liberals who haven’t had to think about a problem until it’s their own. It was important to me that these people, the ones I know and meet, can see themselves and understand how they might be impacting – or helping – the Queenies in their lives.
How important was it for you to write a book so that young black women can see themselves in the protagonist?
Hugely. I didn’t have it for myself and it affected me and my confidence and my understanding of what value was, and the response from young black women has been completely overwhelming. So many people have DMd me to say that even seeing that cover image has made them feel valid. I can’t quite put into words how that makes me feel.
Do you remember when you first had the idea for Queenie? What was that like?
I think she’s been knocking about in my head for a while, so when I sat down to start writing, she just fell out, almost fully formed, onto the page. She’s not quite a version of me, but I think Issa Rae put it best when she said, of the lead character in Insecure, to paraphrase: ‘I wasn’t going out on a Friday night so wrote a character who did’.
You work full time as well as writing. How did you find time to write this book around your job? What’s your writing routine?
I write at night time exclusively, which has helped with working full time. I’ve tried to write in the day, but it’s never worked as I’m such a night owl so don’t feel very awake or inspired. I also have proper boundaries when it comes to my writing and work; in the office I don’t talk about the book at all. That helps when it comes to being creative in two different areas of my life.
Keep scrolling for more great new books to read this spring
