Queen High by C J Carey: irresistible mix of fact, fictionand feminism – book review –

Because this is Britain under the Nazi jackboot, ruled by a sinister Protectorate where surveillance, isolation and spies are the norm, where women are deemed lesser beings, and where the nation’s now unpalatable past is being slowly and ruthlessly erased.

If you were enthralled by last year’s Widowland, a chilling, thrilling alternative history of political power and social control set in a stunningly imagined surrender Britain, then get ready to be blown away by this page-turning sequel which delivers the same irresistible mix of fact, fiction, feminism and fascinating ‘what ifs.’

Queen High, which returns to the perilous world of 31-year-old Rose Ransom – tasked with rewriting literature for the Culture Ministry but also on a subversive mission to free women and destroy the Protectorate – is the work of C.J. Carey, pen name of journalist and novelist Jane Thynne.

Carey’s own experience of marginalisation when she became a widow after the death of her writer husband Philip Kerr in 2018, and the treatment of older German women during the Second World War, provided the inspiration for these coruscating novels which are packaged with an exciting and seductive feminist twist.

The result is a fully-realised, intricately detailed dystopian Britain in which Hitler’s philosopher and ideologue Alfred Rosenberg rules as Protector and is using the country to fulfil his dream of building a ‘perfect society.’

It’s a place where women are classified under a caste system, based on race, age, heritage, reproductive status and physical characteristics, where those regarded as useless to society can be cast off to the rundown Widowland slums, a hinterland where there is no nutritious food, no colour, no freedom and no hope.

The assassination of the Leader in Alliance Britain has provoked violent retribution and intensified repression and fear, particularly for women. In the corridors of government, there is an intense nervousness and the regime’s obsession with spies has risen to fever pitch.

So now, more than ever, the Protectorate is a place where caution is the watchword, where nobody expresses emotion in public, and where ‘it was always simpler to operate through fear than reason. Fear never failed.’

Meanwhile, the royal family has been usurped. King Edward VIII is dead and the widowed Queen Wallis reigns in his place. Yet some citizens hold out hope that the true queen, Elizabeth, may one day return.

Every evening Rose Ransom looks in the mirror and marvels that she is still alive, even though she is a Geli, a woman classed as being at the top of the pile, the representation of ‘perfect womanhood’ because she is young, intelligent, talented and beautiful.

Rose works as a censor at the Culture Ministry but she has a dark secret... she had a role in the Leader’s death, a fact that has so far been miraculously overlooked. Her current work focuses on the outlawed subject of Poetry, a form of writing that the Protectorate believes transmits subversive meanings, emotions and signals that cannot be controlled. Therefore all Poetry is banned and Rose has been appointed a Poet Hunter.

To widespread surprise, US President Eisenhower and his First Lady are to make an unexpected state visit to the Alliance and Rose is given the job of visiting Queen Wallis to provide a background briefing, but also to find out the American’s state of mind as there are reports that she is becoming ‘unpredictable’ and ‘unbalanced.’

When Rose arrives at the palace, she finds the bored, restless and resentful Wallis in a state of paranoia, desperate to return to America and enjoy the liberty of her homeland. ‘Dangerously detonating, like a time bomb wrapped in Balenciaga,’ Wallis claims she has a secret document so explosive that it will blow the Protectorate apart... but will the last Queen of England dare to pull the trigger on the Alliance?

Queen High builds on the deliciously dark, bleak and scarily convincing Britain that made its first appearance in last year’s Widowland as Carey transports readers to a once free society that has been suppressed, intimidated and redesigned into an intensely patriarchal order where women – even those in the higher castes – have no real control over their lives.

Deep inside this dystopian female nightmare, Carey imagines Rose Ransom, part of a coterie of discarded but not down-and-out, literate women heroically refusing to ditch their freedom and knowledge, and determined to continue fighting back against a brutal male establishment.

And it is up to Poet Hunter Rose – dispatched to interview the widowed Wallis whose life now involves little more than ‘haunting the state rooms’ at Buckingham Palace – to use even the smallest of opportunities from her increasingly precarious position to protect and empower the persecuted sisterhood.

Brimming with richly detailed world-building, intriguing characters both real and fictional, exciting twists and turns, and a growing sense of menace and suspense, Queen High is a celebration of female strength and a reminder of the power of words and books to inform, educate and bring about change.

And with a final chapter that leaves readers on the edge of their seats, Carey must surely have another hand to play before the game is over.

(Quercus, hardback, £16.99)