Stevie‘s review of Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes
Contemporary Fiction published by Fourth Estate 02 Apr 20
This is very much a book of my generation. Our heroine, Clio (short for Cliodhna) Campbell, dragged herself into adulthood during the Miners’ Strike of the late 1980s and shot to fame with an anti-Poll Tax song at the beginning of the 1990s. None of which is necessarily going to mean a lot to US readers, but bear with me. We never properly get to meet Clio. The book begins with the discovery of her body, when she commits suicide with her fifty-first birthday approaching, leaving a short and not exactly explanatory email in lieu of a note. Instead, we see her through the eyes of those whose lives she touched, the ones who loved her and the ones who were frequently exasperated by her.
Jumping between narrators and between eras, we slowly build up a picture of who Clio might have been. Often mysterious, few of her friends and lovers seem to have truly known her, but the reader is led towards completing the picture from the disparate jigsaw pieces thrown haphazardly at them. Clio isn’t always likeable, and neither are some of the point-of-view characters. Other narrators are flawed in ways that are clearly understandable and ultimately forgivable. On the other hand, all are fascinating, and I really enjoyed trying to unpick their stories and figure out how their lives meshed with Clio’s.
It’s really difficult to say much more about any one plot thread or character without introducing spoilers. So many current topics in British politics are brought into the mix, and we see them unfold from their very beginning in a lot of cases, and then follow them all the way up to the point we were at with them pre-pandemic.
I enjoyed observing the cult of personality that sprang up following Clio’s death, and the way in which that event had far more impact than she had managed to achieve in her later years. The media has little time for middle-aged women, but loves a dead starlet, even when they are one and the same. It was also fun having my memory jogged around causes, news items, and pop stars from such a multitude of decades and strata of society. I’d have liked to have seen more of some characters, but I definitely want to read more from this author.
Grade: B
Summary:
Three days before her fifty-first birthday, Clio Campbell one-hit-wonder, political activist, life-long-love and one-night-stand kills herself in her friend Ruths spare bedroom. And, as practical as she is, Ruth doesnt know what to do. Or how to feel. Because knowing and loving Clio Campbell was never straightforward.To Neil, she was his great unrequited love. Hed known it since their days on picket lines as teenagers. Now shes a sentence in his email inbox: Remember me well.The media had loved her as a sexy young starlet, but laughed her off as a ranting spinster as she aged. But with news of her suicide, Clio Campbell is transformed into a posthumous heroine for politically chaotic times. Stretching over five decades, taking in the miners strikes to Brexit and beyond; hopping between a tiny Scottish island, a Brixton anarchist squat, the bloody Genoa G8 protests, the poll tax riots and Top of the Pops, Scabby Queen is a portrait of a woman who refuses to compromise, told by her friends and lovers, enemies and fans.As word spreads of what Clio has done, half a century of memories, of pain and of joy are wrenched to the surface. Those who loved her, those who hated her, and those that felt both ways at once, are forced to ask one question: Who was Clio Campbell
No excerpt available.
