[.uk] Queen of the Underworld: A Novel (ISBN 0345483197)

Reviewed by Karen Morse:
Bright-eyed, independent Emma Gant arrives in Miami in the summer of 1959 with the world at her feet. She has a married lover who'll show her the ropes, and a reasonably-priced residence orchestrated by a family friend, and an upwardly-mobile job at the Miami Star, the most important accessory for a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill journalism school. Emma joins the Star's reporting staff at a tumultuous time, shortly after Fidel Castro enacted his First Agrarian Reform. Living in a hotel run by Cuban émigrés for Cuban émigrés makes the upheavals of Castro's revolución more than just news to Emma. Placing her in this context, the author seems to be drawing a comparison between Emma's situation and that of the Cubans. As Emma is struggling to figure out her place in the world and gauge her future success, so are her newly exiled neighbors. The more one reads into the life history of the author, the more Queen of the Underworld begins to seem like a semi-autobiographical novel. Godwin herself graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1959 and spent a year on the staff of the Miami Herald before embarking on the world travels that sparked her literary career. What is most curious about the novel is that it takes place over such a short period of time. The story of Emma's coming into her own, Queen of the Underworld is a window into what seems to be a key moment in Emma's development, one that may affect her entire career. Godwin, however, manages to squeeze an unbelievable amount of action into less than two weeks. Emma's life during the span of the novel is so full, it is almost surreal; as she herself recounts, "in one week and three days, I met a gangster walking a dog, sat behind a notorious boss at a funeral, became friends with (an) ex-madame (...), and helped two Cubans smuggle arms out of Florida" (331), and that's not even the half of it. By contrast, the novel's ending is unsatisfying and somewhat abrupt. While Emma fantasizes about writing a novel, there is nothing (besides Godwin's own history) that gives any indication that Emma will become a novelist. The narrative ends with both Emma and the reader waiting on her future, filled with unanswered questions. Godwin's characterization, however, is the novel's saving grace. Emma is amazingly sympathetic despite her naïveté and the fact that she seems to have no compunction about sleeping with another woman's husband (although her sexual relationships do seem to be at odds with her history of sexual abuse). More significantly, Queen of the Underworld is full of finely drawn secondary characters. One such character is Don Waldo Navarro, a prominent academic who fled Cuba with his memoirs sewn into his wife's skirt. A minor character, who could have easily been shunted aside after his grand entrance, Don Waldo is made real in Godwin's attention to detail: he swims breaststroke in the hotel pool "in billowing maroon trunks" (260) with "his leonine head erect" (259) and has the ability of seamlessly incorporating a nine-year-old Spanish-speaking girl into a English-language conversation: "the great educator's consecutive translations into Spanish on Luisa's behalf bore no trace of pedagogy. Don Waldo made it seem merely as though he suddenly chose to complete the rest of his discourse in another tongue" (272). Godwin has written a number of other novels including The Odd Woman, Violet Clay, and A Mother and Two Daughters, each of which was nominated for the National Book Award. A career author, she published her first novel in 1970. Her papers are archived in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Life's Learning Lessons:
In this novel by author Gail Godwin, we meet young Emma Gant as she is about to embark on her first job with the Miami Star after graduating college. We see her leaving behind a brow-beaten mother and a sexual and physical abusive step-father. She doesn't however travel to Miami as a fresh flower, for there to meet her is a married lover who has a strong hand in introducing her to a totally different life than she emerged from. At her new home, Emma learns to co-exist with Cubans who have escaped Castro's clutches and meet some very colorful characters who have a great impact on her life, including the Queen of the Underworld, an ex-Madam, her boyfriends wife; a Jewish Mafioso and some Cuban exiles who are exporting dental equipment, or are they? Our young lady seems to have mingled with some not so favorable people.I feel the entire concept of the story was showing how different cultures and people influence lives and the choices we make, for better or worse. It is the story of a young girl who I feel felt the excitement and drawing of the different people she met, the city and the job she was now part of, like someone tasting life for the first time and a freedom she didn't know existed. However, you do wonder if she is naive or just very smart as she lives among these very oddball characters, winding herself in and out of their lives. Are they part of her determent or does she use them to her advantage? I felt this was a different story, at times a little hard to follow, but nevertheless still full of characters that were both mysterious, charming, repulsive, and interesting enough to keep you reading. It's the story of a young girl experiencing life with different cultures, moral standings and customes other than her own, as she makes her way in a time when perhaps the world wasn't ready to make room for her.

Sizzling Miami:
Emma Gant has a huge appetite for life! She's just graduated from college and landed a coveted job as a reporter at the Miami Star newspaper. Anxious to escape having to return to her stepfather's physical and sexual abuse, she's put plenty of energy into getting as far away from him as she can, albeit regretting the whole situation for her mother whom she dearly loves. But enthusiasm hardly prepares Emma for what she will meet in steaming, multicultural Miami. Yes, she's got an older lover there already but she's still unprepared for the cutthroat competition she will meet in the journalistic world. Starting out writing miniscule obit and hospital reports, she manages in the two weeks in which this novel takes place to discover the secrets behind the Miami Mafia, Cuban exiles shipping illegal arms as dental equipment back to Cuba during the time of Fidel Castro's rise to power, and the sad story behind an ex-Madam of a whorehouse. Although much that happens in the space of these two weeks, it's all pretty much covered on the surface without much development. But one must place one's self within the context of a woman working a new job in the man's world of the 1960s. Keeping that in mind, Emma's propulsion into all of this worldly activity certainly makes sense and makes for interesting reading. She's a gutsy character who rises from her losses prepared to tackle whatever challenges come her way. The only thing that doesn't make much sense is her falling for an older guy, given her negative background with her stepfather. Given the rapidly changing world of the 60's generation, though, Emma Gant (catch the literary parallels with Jane Austin and Thomas Wolfe's characters) certainly gets an education about rich Cuban exiles now floating in memories and little else, the "Lucifer-like" world of journalism, but most of all dreaming big no matter what the world tosses one's way Interesting story that has plenty of zip in spots! Reviewed by Viviane Crystal on March 18, 2007

what a disappointment!!:
Many other reviews summarize the book so I won't repeat everything here. Suffice it to say - it was very disappointing! I kept waiting for something to happen and when the book finally seemed to get really interesting, it ended - just ended - with no resolution, finality, anything!! A waste of time - could have been so much more. Don't buy it - borrow it or pass altogether. If I like a book, I keep it - this one I will sell to a used book store or donate to Goodwill.

Phoned In:
What a lot of interesting secondary characters! Unfortunately, the main character is pretty much annoying. An abusive stepfather gains our sympahy for the plucky heroine at first, but she's so clueless and chirpy--wow, look at me, folks, I'm having an affair! --we lose the sympathy fast and just keep waiting to see if she stumbles. In the audio version, the narrator does a pretty good job with the various accents, but slips out of Southern a few times.