★★★★★ |The Queen Of Clubs
There’s a quote at the front of this book that states:
“Some people are born drag queens.Some people become drag queens. And some poor sods have drag queens thrust upon them.”
And so it starts…
Riding on a wave of drag queen interest, everywhere from the Facebook controversy over users having to use their real name (but only seems to apply to drag queens?) to RuPaul, this book tells a story – and a bloody good one at that!
Tobias has taken some characters that could have been drawn as complete clichés and given them life – these characters, like ‘em or loathe ‘em, are real.
From the still-in-the-closet virgin to the seen-it-all barman, from the abusive relationships to the fading glamorous drag queen – it’s all here and written large.
The story follows one of our cast, Oliver, as he pops his drag club cherry and visits Divas, a seedy, rundown club run by Chris (not me!) It’s here that Oliver meets the rest of the cast – from deluded Robert Davies Junior (aka Wendy WolfWhistle) to the trio of cabaret queens Wendy aspires to join.
The storyline moves along in short, sharp bursts, each chapter leading you into the next in a clever and addictive way. I’m not one to spoil a good plot, but there is lost love, unrequited love, love on the rocks, self-love and self-loathe, drugs, bad cabaret, cops ‘n’ robbers, and bad drag.
This isn’t Drag Race calibre, there’s no Sharon Needles or Bianca Del Rio here – and that’s its charm. This is Everytown or Anytown, and these are people you could walk past on the street any day of the week, these aren’t the polished performers that may have to lip-synch for their lives… these couldn’t lip-synch to save their lives!
This really is one you’ll love – from start to finish, it’ll entice you in, make you feel you know these characters (or someone very like them) and leave you with a shocker of an ending! This is low rent, low end, real life, warts and all stuff and I for one love it!
