The Queen of Whale Cay - Softcover

Kate Summerscale

3.7

657 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007276664 ISBN 13: 9780007276660

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2008

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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:

Born in 1965 Kate Summerscale was brought up in Japan, England and Chile. She took a double-first at Oxford, an MA in Journalism from Stanford University, California, and for some years wrote and edited obituaries on the Daily Telegraph. Now, she writes features for the Telegraph.

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