Queen of the Underworld

QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD is a fascinating story! In 1959, and immediately upon her college graduation, Emma Gant begins her career as a reporter for the Miami Star. Upon her arrival in Florida, Tess, an old friend of her mother's, meets her and then takes Emma to live at the Julia Tuttle Hotel. The hotel had seen better days, and Emma is not impressed, but within just hours, she realizes that she is in the hub of history because the hotel is a haven for Cuban refugees. Emma's very bright and impresses everyone she meets. The previous summer she had worked in an establishment in North Carolina called the Nightingale Inn. The wealthy and very married owner, Paul Nightingale became smitten with her and they became lovers. The arrangement has been a secret and Emma is anticipating meeting Paul very soon, as he also owns another establishment in Miami. Emma's life is on the fast track and her instinctive curiosity and desire for knowledge works to her advantage. Cubans, escaping from Castro arrive in Miami every day and she becomes involved in their lives. She's quick to do research and impresses her employers by coming up with some good stories. My only criticism is that Emma seems a little too mature and world-weary for her age and it's a little hard to believe that such a young woman could get such an important job, especially in the 1950's. I believe that her character should have been a little older. Gail Godwin always delivers original stories. This is no exception, but I think that this story ended too soon and may need a sequel.

At the beginning of Gail Godwin's latest novel, QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD, we meet Emma Gant, who has just graduated from the UNC journalism school in the spring of 1959. Rather than taking a job at the Charlotte Observer as her overbearing stepfather suggests, Emma instead accepts a postion as a "cub reporter" for the Miami Star. In the equatorial heat of Miami, she figures, she'll be free of her stepfather's late-night visits--and free to romp with her married lover, Paul Nightingale. Once she arrives in Miami, however, Emma realizes nothing is as she thought it would be: Her hotel is overwhelmed with refugees fleeing Cuba and the country's new dictator, Fidel Castro; there's a distance growing between herself and Paul that she can't explain; and her journalistic career consists mainly of writing obituaries for the Star. Then relief from the monotony comes in the form of Ginevra Brown, aka the Queen of the Underworld, a former madam who ran a prostitution ring out of a prominent girls' prep school when she herself was a student there. Now a washed-up twenty-something, Ginevra is married to her psychologist and can't stop attempting to commit suicide, even though she doesn't really want to die. Emma meets her in the hospital after her most recent attempt, and immediately our savvy young reporter is drawn to the former Queen. But in heat-drenched, rain-soaked Miami, everyone has a secret motive--and Emma is no exception. QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD brings to life a time and place little explored in contemporary fiction: Miami, in 1959, a point in history when Havana breezes became a memory for thousands of Cuban refugees fleeing from Castro. Godwin peoples her novel with extraordinary Cuban characters--from the young hotel manager with a degree in Comparative Literature from Harvard (and who has a harmless, unrequited crush on Emma), to the nine-year-old niña who projects her own hopes and fears onto two raggedy dolls she brought from her family's sugar plantation in Cuba, to the well-known scholar who hides his memoirs in the skirt of his bride's wedding dress in order to smuggle them out of the country. Her characters are rich and well-nuanced, by far the best part of the novel. Emma, herself, is a richly-realized heroine. I wholly disagree with reviewers here who have said that Emma is too perfect to be believed. It seems to me she's a completely imperfect heroine; she's at once narcissistic and self-conscious, conceited and clingy, naive and a know-it-all. We must remember that Emma is the first-person narrator of this story--and while the narrative may herald all of Emma's accomplishments, those achievements and praises are coming through the filter of Emma herself. And her relationships are far from healthy and trusting; after all, she infers that she's had many sexual partners--and her most recent one is a 43-year-old married Jewish man, with whom she can clearly have no future. Emma is deliciously unlikeable (and I say "deliciou

Gail Godwin's latest novel is all about Emma Gant, recently graduated from a university in North Carolina, and embarking on her first real job as a beginning reporter (she writes obits) for the MIAMI STAR. Apparently we are to think of both Jane Austin's EMMA and Thomas Wolfe's LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL when we meet this character. She has all the enthusiasm and naivete we expect from a young woman who celebrates her twenty-second birthday during the week or so that this novel spans in 1959. A bourbon and beer girl, she hardly knows the difference between a yarmulke and a guayabera, is subject to the many pitfalls that a novice makes on any beginning career and of course encounters the sexism at the newspaper we would expect from males of that era. She sometimes asks the wrong questions and is provincial when it comes to world events. She works hard, however, at being sophisticated and hopes that not many people in the Julia Tuttle, the hotel where she is staying, will witness her first visit to the hotel pool since neither her swimsuit nor her Bass Weejuns are what a fashionable young woman would be wearing. Naive she may be, but not too naive to be having an affair with Paul Nightingale, a Jewish restaurant owner twenty years her senior, and not above taking money from his unsuspecting wife to purchase an expensivse pair of pumps from Saks Fifth Avenue. Godwin makes both Emma and the many characters she encounters, many of them refugees who have fled Castro's Cuba, as well as the City of Miami itself, come alive in vivid detail: Paul's Aunt Stella, a survivor of the Holocaust and a designer of custom perfumes; Alex de Costa, a Cuban American hotel employee who has a mild crush on Emma; his many-times-married mother Lidia; Emma's mother's friend Tess; the newspaper employees et al. Most importantly, however, is the suicidal character Ginevra Snow, the "queen of the underworld," a retired madam now married to a psychiatrist, with whom Emma becomes obsessed. From key lime pie to Howard Johnson's to the humidity, Godwin gets the city just right as well. With language that only a first class writer is capable of, Godwin guides the reader through the education of this young woman with humor and flair. Emma quickly learns some lessons she didn't count on-- about her friend Tess and her lover Paul in particular. Godwin, however, leaves the reader wanting more, as we do not know how successful Emma will be on her new outpost away from the downtown Miami location of the paper, what will be the outcome of her complicated relationship with Paul, and will she ever write about the Queen of the Underworld? If you believe that a good fiction writer should first and foremost tell a good story, than Ms. Godwin meets all the requirements. Secondly she has created a person all of us can identify with as practically everyone under the sun has had to live through the early days of being on his or her own for the very first time.

Emma Gant has just graduated with a journalism degree. She moves to Miami to work as a reporter for the Miami Star and to be near her married lover, Paul. It is 1959 and Emma is soon fascinated by the Cuban exiles living in her hotel, the Julia Tuttle, who tell her their stories of Cuba under Castro. Many appear hopeful that the Castro problem will somehow resolve itself so they can return home, but others are joining the revolution to battle him. Ambitious Emma yearns for a big story as she labors over the obituary notices. She is jealous that another reporter made his name years before on a juicy story revolving around Ginevra Brown, the "Queen of the Underground," a madam with classy manners and Mob connections. In fact, Emma feels that Ginevra's story should have belonged to her, and continues to research it and puzzle over it. Meanwhile, Tess, an old family friend with a colorful past, mystifies Emma. Tess appears to be skulking about in the middle of the night, receiving crates containing dental equipment for the dentist for whom she works. Is Tess romantically involved with Dr. Hector Rodriguez? On the eve of Emma's 22nd birthday, as she's weeping over her disappointment that Paul will not be with her the next day, she is struck with a vision of the relationship's future. Simultaneously, a tornado strikes Miami. Alex de Costa, the Cuban-American manager of Emma's hotel, offers to drive her to the hospital to gather news for the Star. There's a connection of some kind between Emma and Alex, but Emma is unsure of the exact nature of their bond. At the hospital, in the midst of injured patients, Emma discovers an unlikely opportunity: Ginevra Brown, the object of Emma's fascination, is in the emergency room with her third suicide attempt. Emma's brief conversation with Ginevra only serves to whet her appetite to learn more about the woman's present life. Given Ginevra's husband's disapproval of journalists, can Emma somehow forge a bond with the former Queen of the Underground? Emma meets an incredible yet entirely plausible cast of characters, including a Cuban writer who smuggles notes for a memoir sewn into his young bride's wedding gown; a hard-edged competitor at the newspaper office; and Paul's aunt, a perfumer who creates unique scents for individuals. Gail Godwin suffuses the story with sultry Miami atmosphere, bits of nearly forgotten history, flashes of humor, and fascinating newspaper room politics. The reader does not believe for one second that the people and stories are anything but real. As in real life, characters refuse to be pigeonholed: Alex's relationship to Emma is never quite defined and Paul's wife is Emma's friend. This is a big, delicious feast of a novel, all the better to savor in a leisurely fashion (if you can resist the urge to gulp it down in one sitting). It's a treat to join Emma on her journey and nearly painful to come to the end of it. Very highly recommended. --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon