Toni Morrison’s famous injunction to write the book you want to read might have been conceived with a future Carty-Williams in mind. The novel has sold more than half a million copies and is being made into a TV drama on Channel 4.īut where Bridget Jones’s Diary now seems dated in terms of sexual politics, Queenie is often deeply shocking in its depiction of the heroine’s treatment at the hands of a series of toxic men, taking in internet dating, mental health problems and the housing crisis, as well as everything else that goes with being a young woman. Today, her name rarely appears without the words “publishing phenomenon” attached: Queenie won book of the year at the British book awards in 2020 (Bridget Jones took it in 1998), making Carty-Williams the first Black writer ever to get the prize, an indictment of the industry in itself. (She wasn’t working in marketing for a publishing house at the time for nothing.) She wanted her novel, which follows the misadventures of millennial south London journalist Queenie, to reach as wide a readership as possible. I t was Candice Carty-Williams who came up with the “Black Bridget Jones” tagline for her debut novel, Queenie.
