QUEEN CAMILLA.

QUEEN CAMILLA by SUE TOWNSEND.

SOURCE: Ex-library stock.

THE BOOK {According to the back cover}: What if being Royal was a crime?

The UK has come over all republican. The Royal Family exiled to an Exclusion Zone with the other villains and spongers. And to cap it all, the Queen has threatened to abdicate.

Yet Prince Charles is more interested in root vegetables than reigning ... unless his wife Camilla can be Queen in a newly restored monarchy. But when a scoundrel who claims to be the couple's secret lovechild offers to take the crown off their hands, the stage is set for a right Royal show down.

And the question for Camilla (and rest of the country) must be: Queen of the vegetable patch or Queen of England?

FIRST SENTENCE {Chapter 1}: Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, stood smoking a cheap cigarette on the back doorstep of Number Sixteen Hell Close.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 35}: The Queen said, 'Charles blames me and his father for most of the problems he's had in his life. He claims he was neglected, which is terribly unfair. We saw him at least once a day when we were in the country, and his nanny adored him.'

MY THOUGHTS: A big fan of the Adrian Mole books which I read as a teenager, I was bitterly disappointed with Queen Camilla, a follow-up to the 1992 The Queen And I.

Not into talking dogs (or indeed the kicking of them across decking), jokes (I use the term loosely) about the obese, the unemployed? Not clued up on British 'celebrities' such as Stephen Fry or Jeremy Paxman, the current political situation, the in-jokes surrounding the Royal family? Then you probably aren't going to enjoy this novel. 

Set on the Flowers Exclusion Zone (FEZ), a 'sink hole' estate, an open prison in all but name, in which the residents are electronically tagged, their every move recorded, this could have been a humorous social commentary (something the author is renowned for) and yet for me the witticisms were nothing but cheap stereotypical jibes aimed at a society loathed by certain tabloid newspapers.

Loosely plotted and reading more like a over-long comedy skit than a novel, I'm afraid Queen Camilla failed to raise so much as a smile but then humour is very much subjective.

Copyright: Tracy Terry @ Pen and Paper. All original content on http://pettywitter.blogspot.co.uk/ is created by the website owner, including but not limited to text, design, code, images, photographs and videos are considered to be the Intellectual Property of the website owner, whether copyrighted or not, and are protected by DMCA Protection Services using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Title 17 Chapter 512 (c)(3). Reproduction or re-publication of this content is prohibited without permission.