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Editorial Review Book Description
Here at last is the eagerly awaited new novel from New York Times bestselling author Gail Godwin. Queen of the Underworld is sweeping and sultry literary fiction, featuring a memorable young heroine and engaging characters whose intimate dramas interconnect with hers.
In the summer of 1959, as Castro clamps down on Cuba and its first wave of exiles flees to the States to wait out what they hope to be his short-lived reign, Emma Gant, fresh out of college, begins her career as a reporter. Her fierce ambition and belief in herself are set against the stories swirling around her, both at the newspaper office and in her downtown Miami hotel, which is filling up with refugees.
Emma’s avid curiosity about life thrives amid the tropical charms and intrigues of Miami. While toiling at the news desk, she plans the fictional stories she will write in her spare time. She spends her nights getting to know the Cuban families in her hotel–and rendezvousing with her married lover, Paul Nightingale, owner of a private Miami Beach club.
As Emma experiences the historical events enveloping the city, she trains her perceptive eye on the people surrounding her: a newfound Cuban friend who joins the covert anti-Castro training brigade, a gambling racketeer who poses a grave threat to Paul, and a former madam, still in her twenties, who becomes both Emma’s obsession and her alter ego. Emma’s life, like a complicated dance that keeps sweeping her off her balance, is suddenly filled with divided loyalties, shady dealings, romantic and professional setbacks, and, throughout, her adamant determination to avoid “usurpation” by others and remain the protagonist of her own quest.
From the Hardcover edition.Download Description
1.
Now I had graduated on this bright June Saturday in 1959 and few were theobstacles left between me and my getaway train to Miami—obstacles thatnevertheless must be cunningly surmounted.
“Emma, you ride in front with Earl,” said Mother, as expected. “I’ll sitin back and reminisce a little more about my time here in Paradise.”
“Oh?” challenged Earl. “What does that make the rest of your life, then, acomedown?”
“The rest of my life is still in progress,” Mother lightly countered,making room for herself among my college leftovers that were going back tothe mountains with them. “Ask me again in thirty or forty years.”
We began the winding descent out of Chapel Hill as, seven years earlier,the three of us, with my mother’s new husband at the wheel, had begunanother descent into a new life. Only this time, they would be dropping meoff within the hour at the Seaboard Station in Raleigh. My journey as partof this family unit would soon be at an end. Happily, my train to Miamileft at one fifteen, so a farewell lunch had been out of the question, acircumstance diminishing that much further the chance of a last-minuteblowup with Earl.
But still I was on my guard, for already he was making those engorgedthroat noises that preceded a sermon. I did not dare glance back at Motherfor fear of catching her eye. An exchanged look of sympathy or, Godforbid, a mutual smirk might still explode everything sky-high, as it haddone plenty of times before. My job was to look respectfully attentivewithout rising to his bait. I folded my hands in my lap and faced front,focusing on the road ahead. Windows on both sides were open to let in thebreeze, and the capricious little whomp-whomps of hot air provided adivertimento against Earl’s opening sally and helped me keep my owncounsel.
Sacrifices had been made. If I would ever stop to think about otherpeople. Empathy and gratitude not my strong suits. Had never known what itwas to apply myself on a daily basis. Hadn’t been required of me. Had beenraised to think that the world revolved around me and that I could coastalong without making much of an effort. Not completely my fault. Had beenindulged too much for my own good by teachers as well as family. But now Iwas going into the real world where I would have to knuckle under anddeliver the goods like everybody else.
“Though why you should choose to go off half-cocked to a place like Miamiremains a mystery to your mother and me. Your dean told us the CharlotteObserver wanted you, but he said you’d had your heart set on Miami eversince you went down for that interview at Christmas. I said, well, we werethe last to know she went to Miami for Christmas. She told us she wasstaying in the dorm to catch up on her work. We didn’t learn the truthtill February.”
Damn and blast you, I thought. You have a single conversation with mydean, who adores me, and you make me out a liar.
“I didn’t want to say anything to anyone until I knew I had the job,” Icautiously replied.
“I told the dean, she doesn’t even know anybody in Miami—”
I don’t know anybody in Charlotte, either, I refrained from saying.
“She knows Tess,” put in Mother from the backseat. Tess was her oldcollege roommate from Converse. “Tess will be meeting her train tomorrowmorning.”
“So why didn’t she stay with Tess at Christmas, when she went down forthat interview?” His voice had edged up a decibel.
“Well, I guess she wanted to stay with someone else at Christmas,” Motherneutrally suggested.
Of course I had told them, after the fa ... Read more Customer Reviews (29) 
Dreadful
When I read and enjoy a book, I pass it on, tell my friends and family, and am pleased when others can also enjoy the book.When I read a truly dreadful book, like Queen of the Underworld, I feel obligated to tell anyone and everyone who might be interested in reading the book to STOP.Don't make the same mistake I made.The hours you will waste reading that horrid book are hours you will never get back.Read a cookbook instead.It will be much more satisfying.
Phoned In
What a lot of interesting secondary characters! Unfortunately, the main character is pretty much annoying. An abusive stepfather gains our sympahy for the plucky heroine at first, but she's so clueless and chirpy--wow, look at me, folks, I'm having an affair! --we lose the sympathy fast and just keep waiting to see if she stumbles.
In the audio version, the narrator does a pretty good job with the various accents, but slips out of Southern a few times.
what a disappointment!!
Many other reviews summarize the book so I won't repeat everything here. Suffice it to say - it was very disappointing! I kept waiting for something to happen and when the book finally seemed to get really interesting, it ended - just ended - with no resolution, finality, anything!! A waste of time - could have been so much more.Don't buy it - borrow it or pass altogether.If I like a book, I keep it - this one I will sell to a used book store or donate to Goodwill.
Reviewed by Karen Morse
Bright-eyed, independent Emma Gant arrives in Miami in the summer of 1959 with the world at her feet.She has a married lover who'll show her the ropes, and a reasonably-priced residence orchestrated by a family friend, and an upwardly-mobile job at the Miami Star, the most important accessory for a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill journalism school.
Emma joins the Star's reporting staff at a tumultuous time, shortly after Fidel Castro enacted his First Agrarian Reform. Living in a hotel run by Cuban émigrés for Cuban émigrés makes the upheavals of Castro's revolución more than just news to Emma.Placing her in this context, the author seems to be drawing a comparison between Emma's situation and that of the Cubans.As Emma is struggling to figure out her place in the world and gauge her future success, so are her newly exiled neighbors.
The more one reads into the life history of the author, the more Queen of the Underworld begins to seem like a semi-autobiographical novel.Godwin herself graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1959 and spent a year on the staff of the Miami Herald before embarking on the world travels that sparked her literary career.
What is most curious about the novel is that it takes place over such a short period of time.The story of Emma's coming into her own, Queen of the Underworld is a window into what seems to be a key moment in Emma's development, one that may affect her entire career.Godwin, however, manages to squeeze an unbelievable amount of action into less than two weeks.Emma's life during the span of the novel is so full, it is almost surreal; as she herself recounts, "in one week and three days, I met a gangster walking a dog, sat behind a notorious boss at a funeral, became friends with [an] ex-madame [...], and helped two Cubans smuggle arms out of Florida" (331), and that's not even the half of it.
By contrast, the novel's ending is unsatisfying and somewhat abrupt.While Emma fantasizes about writing a novel, there is nothing (besides Godwin's own history) that gives any indication that Emma will become a novelist.The narrative ends with both Emma and the reader waiting on her future, filled with unanswered questions.
Godwin's characterization, however, is the novel's saving grace.Emma is amazingly sympathetic despite her naïveté and the fact that she seems to have no compunction about sleeping with another woman's husband (although her sexual relationships do seem to be at odds with her history of sexual abuse).More significantly, Queen of the Underworld is full of finely drawn secondary characters.One such character is Don Waldo Navarro, a prominent academic who fled Cuba with his memoirs sewn into his wife's skirt.A minor character, who could have easily been shunted aside after his grand entrance, Don Waldo is made real in Godwin's attention to detail:he swims breaststroke in the hotel pool "in billowing maroon trunks" (260) with "his leonine head erect" (259) and has the ability of seamlessly incorporating a nine-year-old Spanish-speaking girl into a English-language conversation: "the great educator's consecutive translations into Spanish on Luisa's behalf bore no trace of pedagogy.Don Waldo made it seem merely as though he suddenly chose to complete the rest of his discourse in another tongue" (272).
Godwin has written a number of other novels including The Odd Woman, Violet Clay, and A Mother and Two Daughters, each of which was nominated for the National Book Award.A career author, she published her first novel in 1970.Her papers are archived in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Life's Learning Lessons
In this novel by author Gail Godwin, we meet young Emma Gant as she is about to embark on her first job with the Miami Star after graduating college. We see her leaving behind a brow-beaten mother and a sexual and physical abusive step-father. She doesn't however travel to Miami as a fresh flower, for there to meet her is a married lover who has a strong hand in introducing her to a totally different life than she emerged from.
At her new home, Emma learns to co-exist with Cubans who have escaped Castro's clutches and meet some very colorful characters who have a great impact on her life, including the Queen of the Underworld, an ex-Madam, her boyfriends wife; a Jewish Mafioso and some Cuban exiles who are exporting dental equipment, or are they? Our young lady seems to have mingled with some not so favorable people.I feel the entire concept of the story was showing how different cultures and people influence lives and the choices we make, for better or worse.
It is the story of a young girl who I feel felt the excitement and drawing of the differentpeople she met, the city and the job she was now part of, like someone tasting life for the first time and a freedom she didn't know existed. However, you dowonder if she is naive or just very smart as she lives among these very oddball characters, winding herself in and out of their lives. Are they part of her determent or does she use them to her advantage?
I felt this was a different story, at times a little hard to follow, but nevertheless still full of characters that were both mysterious, charming, repulsive, and interesting enough to keep you reading. It's the story of a young girl experiencing life with different cultures, moral standingsand customes other than her own,as she makes her way in a time when perhaps the world wasn't ready to make room for her.
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