Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A worthy successor to "The Queen and I", 5 Feb 2007
Fourteen years after "The Queen and I" was published, there is finally news from the former Royal Family, who were resettled by Republican prime minister Jack Barker to a council estate after the British electorate voted for a republic.
The royals are now electronically tagged and banned from leaving their Exclusion Zone, which is run by a private entrepreneur. In a republic where six million people already live in Exclusion Zones, Jack Barker is still the prime minister, but getting tired of office. In order to deliberately loose the forthcoming elections, he is introducing ever-weirder measures, including legislation against stepladders and dogs. The leader of the New Conservatives, Boy English, believes that the restoration of the monarchy is a vote winner.
It is against this backdrop that the Queen and her family (now including Princes Andrew and Edward as well as Camilla, wife of Prince Charles) continue their struggle for their survival - and their dogs' - survival. The appearance of Camilla's forgotten 'bastard son' Graham threatens William's position as the heir to the throne.
"Queen Camilla" is as funny as the "The Queen and I". You don't have to read the two books in the correct order, but it helps to see how the characters have evolved.
The book is an absolute treat, and Sue Townsend's masterful description of the Queen and her family leaves a profound impact on one's impression of the royals. I for one got to know the Queen a bit better, having read those books.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In Celebration of British Liberty, 10 Sep 2007
« Queen Camilla » by Sue Townsend 2006 Penguin Books, UK
Sue Townsend is a very well-established comic novelist, and the light-hearted humour throughout « Queen Camilla » provides a welcome relief from the heavy- handed news reports that can make us heavy-hearted about the Royal Family on a daily basis. I read this book in the week between Prince Harry's well-delivered tribute at the Guard's Chapel on the Friday and his shambolic hung-over performance at Heathrow Airport the following Thursday. Townsend seems to have Harry's number exactly, and though he rarely appears in the novel at all, he was at one point suspected by Charles of having lobbed a brick tied round with a handwritten note saying « Yourl never be queen ». Near the end of the book Harry gets a 15-year-old neighbour on the council estate pregnant and agrees to marry her. Each member of the Royal Family receives piercing and perceptive treatment from Townsend, though she seems kindest about William - the only one in the family to take a real job and come home with callousses on his hands - and the Queen, whom everyone finds kind and caring, if a bit common in her tastes and interests, and who abdicates near the end.
In « Queen Camilla », the monarchy has been abolished and the Royal Family has been sent to live in an exclusion zone, along with « the criminal, the antisocial, the inadequate, the feckless, the agitators, the disgraced professionals, the stupid, the drug-addicted and the morbidly obese » - about 40% of the population. Tagged and watched on closed-circuit television, privacy is a thing of the past. Townsend touches all the bases, portraying government leaders and their public-private enterprise partners with the same astute and amusing good taste she brings to the Family. And let us not forget her portrayal of Vulcan, the hugely expensive national computer that knows all about our various aliments, our shopping history, our reading matter and everything else, trusted implicitly by the people but known by the police to be almost entirely unreliable. The `plot' such as it is, centres on the Prime Minister's attempt to lose the election by banning dogs, and therefore dogs - and their ability to talk to one another - play an important part in this story, as does Camilla's apparent inability to grasp the significance of her situation.
« Queen Camilla » is a fast and amusing read, which prompted a few gentle chuckles and touched a soft spot for our much beleagured Royal Family and our long-suffering electorate. And what the book speaks to, perhaps more than anything else, is the tremendous luxury of our freedoms, that such a book can be written and enjoyed, and no one is threatened, imprisoned, stoned or beheaded. Even in its mocking of our traditions, « Queen Camilla » is a celebration of all that we hold dear .
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious Riff on the Royals - and Their Subjects, 11 Aug 2008
This quirky, biting satire begins with the Royal Family having been exiled to council housing in what is called an Exclusion Zone - a place where the slappers, the morbidly obese, the criminal and other undesirables are sent. The Queen cares for her ailing husband and despairs of her dysfunctional brood. The caricatures are vividly drawn here, and only Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles' long-suffering wife, Camilla, come off very well.
I found something hilarious on almost every page - Sue Townsend has a wicked wit and, though I am a recent transplant to these shores and thus have probably missed some cultural references, I was nonetheless entranced by the storyline, and the foibles Miss Townsend gave her characters. Charles dithers, Camilla consoles, Anne swears a lot, Andrew's gotten chubby and chases girls with wild abandon, William is earnest and Harry's a thug. Throw some unexpected characters into the mix (along with some great cameos from the likes of Stephen Fry and Jeremy Paxman) and you've got a page-turner. Not "great literature," but I couldn't care less - life is too short to read books that enrich without entertaining. There were some scenes that were movingly written, and one that had me crying uncontrollably - that Townsend can inspire such a range of emotion is very telling and a compliment to her literary skills.
Another, interesting, surprising aspect was the integral participation of the community's pet dogs, and the stunning plot twist that they pull off - dumb animals, indeed!
I only gave the book four stars instead of five because of some rather glaring editorial errors that leapt off the page at me and took me out of the story. A good proofreader/editor would have solved that problem and made this a five-star novel.
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