Review: Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes
There aren’t many book titles which evoke a time and place so viscerally, but from the first post I read about Scabby Queen I was immediately thrown back into my high school’s 6th year common room. Rickety pool table, bags of textbooks; inept flirting and furtive drinking and Lynx Africa and card games. Endless, endless rounds of card games, which were, frankly, often a cover for most of the above. Scabby Queen was one we played most often, no one wanting to be left holding that lone queen. My word but I’m glad we’re only 17 once.
Anyhow. Scabby Queen (the book) spirals around Clio and the impact she has left on the people who have been in her life. Left, past participle, because the book starts with Clio’s death. No spoilers here - her suicide is on the blurb. So in no way are we reading to find out how it ends - instead we’re trying to uncover how we got there, why she did it, and what it means for all the people Clio influenced.
Scabby Queen
She’s not some fairytale heroine, Cliodhna Jean. She’s impulsive, loud and opinionated. She loves a cause and will get stuck right in, often to the detriment of others. She’s on-and-off famous and drags some people into her orbit while eclipsing others without a thought. But as we get to know her, we start to understand more and more about how she ended up in that Renfrewshire house ending her own life.
“she would come and go as she pleased ... but I don’t think she was returning anywhere”
Innes is a superb character writer. Clio is layered and nuanced, and the discovery of each aspect and perspective of her personality through the medium of lovers, family, friends, and the media, is skilfully done. Conversely, but equally adeptly, some characters are sketched and understood with a brevity that far more experienced authors struggle with. Xanthe, for example, is a whole character set up in just 4 paragraphs. Some characters make just a brief appearance - I loved Ida on the train - while others weave in and out of Clio’s life over decades.
I read Scabby Queen last year on kindle when it first came out, but knew it was one for the permanent collection. The re-read on receiving the paperback recently has uncovered ever greater gradations than I grasped while racing through it last summer. Now I’m wondering whether I should grab the audiobook also, just to complete the set - Cathleen McCarron is one of my favourite narrators. The backdrop of 1980s through to 2010s Scotland and London is grimy and relatable, while the snippets of political commentary are pointedly accurate.
We all choose what we reveal to others. The persona we display at work, home, and especially online is usually edited and often reflects who we wish we were. Very few of us will be granted the opportunity to discover what others truly think of us through their own lens. Clio’s story allows us an opportunity to imagine how that could play out, to the most brutally candid of ends.
