The Queen Of Whale Cay - Hardcover

Kate Summerscale

3.7

657 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857023609 ISBN 13: 9781857023602

Publisher: FOURTH ESTATE, 1997

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Joe Carstairs was renowned in the 1920s as an "invert" who smoked cheroots and dressed as a man, as an heiress to the standard oil fortune and as the fastest female speedboat racer in the world. In 1934 she disappeared to embark on a course even more ambitious and bizarre: she bought an island in the West Indies and created her own kingdom, founding and ruling a colony of 500 black Bahamians. On the island of Whale Cay, Joe Carstairs fiercely guarded her privacy and exercised absolute power. She demanded obedience and moral virtue from her people while herself continuing to live exactly as she pleased. and though she entertained actresses, duchesses and priests, she reserved her greatest love for her boats, her cars and the enigmatic Lord Tod Wadley.

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Review:

British eccentric Marion "Joe" Carstairs (1900-1993) was a world-class speedboat racer, heiress to the Standard Oil fortune, ruler of her own Caribbean Island ... and a cross-dressing lesbian. This biography places Carstairs's adventurous life in the context of 20th-century attitudes toward sexual deviance. During the permissive 1920s, Carstairs was able to flaunt her taste for women in the bohemian circles of London and Paris. She had affairs with numerous gals, including Natalie Barney and Dolly Wilde, Oscar's niece. When writing about Carstairs's boat races, the press of that roaring decade regarded her as a loveable tomboy. But as social norms shifted in the '30s, Carstairs's lifestyle was frowned upon. So she acquired Whale Cay, an island off the coast of Florida, turned it into her own version of paradise, became a gentleman farmer, and had an affair with Marlene Dietrich. Carstairs's most important and long-term relationship, though, was with Lord Tod Wadley, a stuffed leather doll. --Rebecca Brown

About the Author:

KATE SUMMERSCALE is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Her most recent book is Mrs Robinson's Disgrace. Kate Summerscale has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker Prize. She lives in London.

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