A The gynecological exam is a good analogy for the kind of painful introspection at which Queenie Jenkins excels. The heroine of Candice Carty-Williams’s 2019 debut Queenie memorably begins that novel with a medical appointment for a mysterious illness that turns into a miscarriage. The sequel, Queenie Is Working on It, takes place eight years later, with 33-year-old Queenie returning, this time for fertility checkups. “I didn’t realize they used condoms for anything other than sex,” Queenie observes casually as the doctor examines her. Life has changed, but in many ways, Queenie hasn’t.
Carthy-Williams’s debut novel, about a struggling Jamaican-British woman living in London dealing with romantic disaster and a mental health crisis, was a breakout bestseller. What’s reassuring is that her curiosity about female friendship – the deep affection, the stubborn solidarity, the ribald humor – persists, as does her understanding of how the particular experience of race affects the ordinary lives of black women. These are the qualities that made Queenie feel unique and interesting in 2019. She remains the same in 2026, but your patience for the new novel depends on your tolerance for her continued misadventures.
As the title suggests, she is a work in progress. The new Queenie has exchanged her disappointing magazine job for a role on a Black-owned social media platform. This is what drives her undercover to a fertility clinic, where she researches black women’s experience of IVF treatment. When tests indicate low chances of a natural pregnancy, Queenie is left confused and forced to confront her chaotic love life.
Carty-Williams is clever and funny on Queenie’s delusions about her various lovers, especially the cheerfully non-committed Vin, who works for Transport for London. Having sex with her was “like some kind of erotic fair ride where the ultimate goal was to have a stomach-dropping orgasm as well as end up breathless and thanking God that everything is in one piece in the end”. If Queenie isn’t always in on the joke, snapping sexy selfies desperate for a nostalgic Win, her nerd friends are there to set her straight. Friends like Kyzyk – who calls Vin “TfL” because “they don’t deserve government names until they prove themselves worthy” – are delightfully felt, intelligent and sarcastic. However, what Queenie doesn’t know is that it could be troublesome. Luckily, when she thinks about having sex with a personal trainer named Pharoah, Kyzyk is there to inform her that “It’s never smart to fuck PT. He’s the community dick, sister.”
But Queenie’s sexual vulnerability is a serious theme that continues in this sequel, where erotic engagements with men are a futile attempt to secure an emotional connection. For Queenie, sex is a psychological way of trying (and often failing) to fix the things that are going wrong in her life. It helps that Carty-Williams writes with neat candor, practical and technical rather than encouraging. When Queenie buys a moving penis ring for Vin, he shakes his head. “No, girls… I’m not into that AI crap.”
But, as the fertility doctor reminds Queenie, “the clock is ticking”. At a hen party, she finds herself taking careful notes on her phone during a discussion of anovulation and basal temperature testing. “Why didn’t we learn this stuff in school?” He feels. “Why did I have to learn the basics of pregnancy at a hen party when I was 33?” It’s a sharp question, and Queenie raises it on behalf of a generation of women for whom reproductive choices are shaped by financial insecurity and the pressures of career planning. Queenie is not the only one who is poorly informed and concerned about her reproductive future.
When Queenie lies to her sexual partners about contraception in the hopes that she can get pregnant, Kayzyk said that “bringing a black child into the world Intentionally Being raised by a single parent feels wrong, sister. This is not good for me at all.” This is an example of the deliberate ways in which Carty-Williams channels the racial politics of ordinary life. This is not a highly controversial statement, merely a reflection of Kyzyak’s understanding of the world. The experience of race is a condition of Queenie’s existence, but never the thing that defines her. It’s a point that Carty-Williams always makes with a deftly light touch. “Please. Queenie rolls her eyes at one point and complains, “This is not about the strong black woman. We left it behind in 2020 when black lives mattered. We’ve now moved on to soft life, or whatever the girls on TikTok are saying is the latest personal political viewpoint.” Whatever the case, Queenie is probably still working on the next novel.
