The Briar Club
Kate Quinn
Harper Collins
The Briar Club opens on Thanksgiving Day 1954 in Washington DC in a slightly down-at-heel boarding house, Briarwood House, where the boarders and others are gathered in the kitchen while police investigate the corpse lying upstairs with its throat cut. This section, as are others throughout the book, is narrated by the house itself, which becomes a character in its own right.
Then we get to meet the residents, starting with the arrival, four years earlier, of Grace March, who takes one of the rooms and slowly begins to mould the other women who live there, along with the dismal landlady’s two rather sad children, into a cohesive support group. When Mrs Nilsson, the landlady, goes off to her Thursday evening bridge dates, the others meet in Grace’s room for supper and friendship.
Quinn has structured the novel so each of the main characters has a section to herself, and we get to know them and their stories, and watch the events that have made them who they are on the fateful Thanksgiving night.
We meet Irish-American Nora who falls for a gangster; Hungarian refugee Reka who is grumpy but with reason; Fliss, whose husband is a medic and away at the Korean War, leaving her to cope with their infant daughter; Bea who during World War 2 was a star of the women’s baseball league until injury cut her career short; red-haired Claire who works for an anti-McCarthyite senator and hides much about herself, and; fanatical anti-communist Arlene who falls for an FBI agent and is not too popular with the others. Until the end we learn the least about Grace, who is the catalyst for the interactions of the others.
While we are finding about the boarders, some of their friends and the Nilsson children, the social conditions of the time are also being made clear – the prejudices, the fears that were rampant in the post-World War 2 years and the gang-ridden culture that prevailed in America. Then we find out there is a second corpse in Briarwood House.
It’s difficult not to give spoilers to the plot – and they really would spoil the story. Quinn herself at the start of the author’s note warns it would be a bad idea to read it before reading the book. The Briar Club is a cleverly constructed, lively and entertaining read, maybe not terribly profound but enjoyable, with enough in it to be a satisfying piece of historical fiction that illuminates the time in which it is set and tells a cracking story.
‘The Briar Club’ is a cleverly constructed and entertaining read
The Briar Club
Kate Quinn
Harper Collins
The Briar Club opens on Thanksgiving Day 1954 in Washington DC in a slightly down-at-heel boarding house, Briarwood House, where the boarders and others are gathered in the kitchen while police investigate the corpse lying upstairs with its throat cut. This section, as are others throughout the book, is narrated by the house itself, which becomes a character in its own right.
Then we get to meet the residents, starting with the arrival, four years earlier, of Grace March, who takes one of the rooms and slowly begins to mould the other women who live there, along with the dismal landlady’s two rather sad children, into a cohesive support group. When Mrs Nilsson, the landlady, goes off to her Thursday evening bridge dates, the others meet in Grace’s room for supper and friendship.
Quinn has structured the novel so each of the main characters has a section to herself, and we get to know them and their stories, and watch the events that have made them who they are on the fateful Thanksgiving night.
We meet Irish-American Nora who falls for a gangster; Hungarian refugee Reka who is grumpy but with reason; Fliss, whose husband is a medic and away at the Korean War, leaving her to cope with their infant daughter; Bea who during World War 2 was a star of the women’s baseball league until injury cut her career short; red-haired Claire who works for an anti-McCarthyite senator and hides much about herself, and; fanatical anti-communist Arlene who falls for an FBI agent and is not too popular with the others. Until the end we learn the least about Grace, who is the catalyst for the interactions of the others.
While we are finding about the boarders, some of their friends and the Nilsson children, the social conditions of the time are also being made clear – the prejudices, the fears that were rampant in the post-World War 2 years and the gang-ridden culture that prevailed in America. Then we find out there is a second corpse in Briarwood House.
It’s difficult not to give spoilers to the plot – and they really would spoil the story. Quinn herself at the start of the author’s note warns it would be a bad idea to read it before reading the book. The Briar Club is a cleverly constructed, lively and entertaining read, maybe not terribly profound but enjoyable, with enough in it to be a satisfying piece of historical fiction that illuminates the time in which it is set and tells a cracking story.
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