Title: The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
Book Beginnings quote:
Prologue. Thanksgiving 1954. Washington, D.C. -- If these walls could talk. Well, they may not be talking, but they are certainly listening. And watching.
Friday56 quote:
More than fifteen bouquets later, here they were.
Summary: Briarwood House is an all-female boarding house. The women all pretty much keep to themselves until Grace moves in. Grace, who lives in the tiny attic room, invites this ragtag group of women to join her for an impromptu dinner once a week and her attention draws them all out: Bea, a frustrated female baseball player turned PE teacher; Fliss, a British nurse and new mom whose husband is a doctor for the Korean conflict in Japan; Nora, a policeman's daughter; Reka, an immigrant from Poland; Clarie, a woman trying to hide her homosexuality; and Arlene, a goodie-two-shoes that none of the other women like. They call their weekly dinner "The Briar Club" which they hold the one night of the week the house manager is out playing bridge. Over four years a deep bond develops between the women, then on Thanksgiving, 1954, a murder occurs in their midst and suddenly what they thought they knew about each other gets called into question.
Review: The Briar Club is my fourth Kate Quinn book. I really like the way she incorporates history into her novels and this book is no exception. After WWII ended, the Cold War started up and the USA became embroiled in a "Red Scare", leading the charge -- Senator McCarthy. This theme of anti-communism was a thread that ran throughout the story. In addition there were many topics either touched on or expanded on throughout: domestic violence, birth control -- planning when/if to have children; treatment of immigrants; poverty; LGBTQ+ issues; mobs and police-on-the-take; and the last one, a big one, I can't tell you about or I will spoil the book for you!
Each woman in Briarwood House gets her own chapter, told in her voice or point-of-view. This allows readers to meet and get to know each character slowly. Each chapter has a recipe for the food that character shared with the group during their Thursday night Briar Club gathering. Though I didn't make any of the recipes I was sure tempted by them. During our book club meeting we discussed what food/recipe would we share if we were members of the club. Mine was stew using the same recipe my mother used when we were growing up. It is a family favorite.
Now to the murder mystery. We know from the very first page, which is oddly narrated by the house itself, that there is a murder. And we know the murder occurs several years in the future based on the dates of the chapter headings which slide backwards and forwards on a timeline. Throughout the book the house narrates little transition pages to remind us that the murder happens and to look for clues. So the whole time I was reading, I kept trying to figure out who dies and who does the killing. It makes for a lot of excitement at the end of the book, believe me.
The author's notes at the end of the book were very helpful, so don't skip them if you decide to read it. Several of the gals in book club, including me, thought the book was a slow starter. In fact one gal said the first 50 pages should just be lobbed off and then the book would be great. I thought it could have been trimmed by 50-100 without any loss to the story or my feelings about the characters. But the publisher didn't agree and felt that 450+ was a good length, which conveniently allows me to use this book for the Big Book Summer Challenge.
My rating: 4 stars.
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