The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of "Joe" Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water

by Kate Summerscale

Paperback, 1998

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

Viking Adult (1998), 256 pages

Description

Joe Carstairs was born in London in 1900, the daughter of a Scottish colonel and an American heiress. She was educated in Connecticut and returned to Europe in 1916, to drive ambulances for the Women's Legion in France. She deserted her husband at the church door (marriage having been a prerequisite of her coming into her $4 million inheritance) and settled in England, where she took up motor-boat racing, winning many trophies, and established a boatyard at Cowes.

User reviews

LibraryThing member SaraAnn05

This would have made an interesting news article, but I felt that the book stretched the story too far.

"Joe" Carstairs is essentially unknowable, because she never really let anyone close enough to know her. And from this book she seemed to me afraid to know herself too deeply. She really stuck by

her motto of living in the moment.

I think she struggled with knowing whether people were with her for the money or for herself. So she decided to get in first and make it about the money, but she was very generous with her money and life-long loyal to the people she did care about.

I skipped through the pages of poetry and repetitious pages comparing Joe to Peter Pan.

At the end Joe struck me as a rather lonely figure who was perhaps afraid to really grow up. You wonder what would have happened to her if she hadn't had pots of money. With some of her antics she'd have either been in prison or a psychiatric ward.

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LibraryThing member Seajack

Ms. Summerscale has done an awful lot of research on a somewhat obscure subject, to put together a fascinating potrait of such an eccentric character. I confess I skimmed through the boat racing details, though they are an important part of the story.

LibraryThing member drmarymccormack

I read this book when it first came out, so it's been awhile. I can say for certain that it made an impression on me! This lady was BIZARRE, not in a really creepy way but in a kind of cool way. I love reading about people who have enough money to indulge an eccentric whim. I love the doll thing-

weeeeeird! I mean, look at the photo on the cover of this book. Who gets a professional to photograph you and your doll?

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LibraryThing member satyridae

I liked the subject of this biography so much that I was almost able to ignore the writing. It was patchy, jumpy, and odd. There were bits that made me roll my eyes, and bits that made me hiss- mostly assumptions on the part of the author. I'd like to read an in-depth biography of Carstairs by a

genuine biographer rather than an obituary writer, I think, but I'm glad I read this one.

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LibraryThing member etxgardener

This was one of those great finds that I sometimes unearth at the dollar store - the story of "Joe" Carstairs, a wealthy transgender who became famous for racing speedboats and later, buying her own private island in the Bahamas where she constructed her own society living openly with other

women/

This was a fascinating look at someone who, if not for her money would have been thought deviant at the time. Instead, she was merely regarded as eccentric.

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