The Red Queen (Drabble novel)
{{Short description|none}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{About||other novels|Red Queen (disambiguation)#Literature}}
{{italic title}}
File:TheRedQueenDrabble.jpg)]]
The Red Queen is a 2004 novel by British novelist Margaret Drabble. The novel describes the trip of a British academic on a trip to Seoul to give a paper at a conference. At the beginning of the novel, the academic, Dr. Babs Halliwell, reads the memoir of a 19th-century Korean princess.
Reception
Reception of the novel was mixed, focusing on the novels' poor treatment of trans-cultural representation. For example, The Observer reviewer David Jays, writes that the novel's prose is full of "solemn repetitions, with rare flinty moments."{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/22/fiction.features|title=Seoul destroying|last=Jays|first=David|date=2004-08-21|newspaper=The Observer|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077|access-date=2016-03-11}} Moreover, he writes that "But both Drabble's ancient and modern Seoul lack the relish and imaginative pragmatism that have recently helped popularise Korean food and movies." Similarly, the New York Times Sunday Book Review, described the novel as failing at meeting the expectations of the subtitle "a transcultural tragicomedy."{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/books/review/the-red-queen-babs-channels-lady-hyegyong.html|title='The Red Queen': Babs Channels Lady Hyegyong|last=Eder|first=Richard|date=2004-10-10|newspaper=The New York Times|issn=0362-4331|access-date=2016-03-11}} Reviewer Richard Eder writes "What we are left with are two narratives entirely separate in style and content, and two voices that never really connect. As for tragicomedy, there's no breath of humour in the princess' stiffly told story and hardly a splinter of irony."{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/21/featuresreviews.guardianreview10|title=Babs and the crown princess|last=Freely|first=Maureen|date=2004-08-20|newspaper=The Guardian|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077|access-date=2016-03-11}}
Guardian reviewer Maureen Freely described the novel as "an implausible but gorgeously trashy romance[...] Rarely has feminist escapism been so stylishly disguised."
Further reading
- {{Cite journal|last=Stovel|first=Nora Foster|date=2007-06-06|title=Margaret Drabble. The Red Queen|url=https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/IFR/article/view/4254|journal=International Fiction Review|volume=34|issue=1|issn=1911-186X}}
- {{Cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-red-queen-by-margaret-drabble-52981.html|title=The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble|website=The Independent|date=21 August 2004 |language=en-GB|access-date=2016-03-11}}
- {{Cite journal|last=Milada|first=Franková|date=2011|title=The Red Queen: Margaret Drabble's (Auto)Biographical Pastiche|url=https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstream/handle/11222.digilib/118141/1_BrnoStudiesEnglish_37-2011-2_8.pdf?sequence=1|journal=Brno Studies in English|volume=37|issue=2|doi=10.5817/BSE2011-2-6|doi-access=free}}