Tag: Kate Quinn

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

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Kate Quinn’s new novel, The Briar Club, begins with a murder in a Washington, D.C. boarding house on Thanksgiving, 1954. We don’t know who the victim is – that will be revealed later on – but it does seem that the killer is likely to be one of the seventeen people gathered in the kitchen waiting to be interviewed by the police. To get answers, we have to go back to the day four years earlier when Grace March arrives at Briarwood House and agrees to take the tiny apartment in the attic…

Grace is just one of several women living in the house, all of whom are hiding secrets and in some cases are not quite what they seem. There’s Nora, who works at the National Archives and is in love with a gangster; Bea, a former baseball player forced to give up her dreams; Claire, who is desperately trying to save to buy her own home; Fliss, an Englishwoman with a baby and an absent husband; unhappy, spiteful Arlene whom nobody likes; and Reka, an elderly Hungarian refugee. The novel unfolds through a series of interlinked short stories each focusing on one of these women, interspersed with chapters describing the aftermath of the Thanksgiving murder. The latter are narrated by Briarwood House itself, because the house knows better than anyone else what has been going on within its walls!

I enjoyed The Briar Club, but found some of the women’s stories much more engaging than others. Nora’s story came first and was completely gripping, which maybe raised my expectations too high for the rest of the book. By the time I reached Bea’s section in the middle, I was starting to get bored, although things did pick up again later on. Despite the brief chapters about the murder that are scattered throughout the book, I think anyone who starts to read this expecting a mystery novel or a thriller will be disappointed – but if you like character-driven novels with a slower pace it will probably be more to your taste. Speaking of taste, food and drink play a big part in the story, with each character sharing some of their recipes with us! So if you want to know how to make Bea’s ragù, Arlene’s candle salad or Claire’s potato pancakes, the instructions are all in the book (and even if you’re not a cook, I recommend skipping to the end of each recipe where you’ll find a suggestion for a suitable song to accompany the meal).

Although each woman in the house has her own individual story to tell, they all get together for weekly social gatherings in Grace’s attic room (the ‘Briar Club’ of the title) and over the years most of the women begin to form close bonds. A very different kind of relationship that also develops is between the women of the Briar Club and the two children of their landlady, Mrs Nilsson. Pete Nilsson gets a chapter of his own, but I particularly loved seeing how his younger sister, Lina, grows in confidence (and improves her baking skills) due to the friendship and support of the Briar Club. The novel also provides us with a snapshot of life in America in the early 1950s, with a focus on McCarthy and the fear of communism.

The Briar Club was an enjoyable read overall, but I would have preferred some of the women’s stories to be cut short or left out altogether. So far, The Rose Code is still my favourite of the three Kate Quinn books I’ve read (the other is The Diamond Eye).

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 16/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

Book 34/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

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I loved The Rose Code by Kate Quinn – it was one of my favourite books last year. Because of that, I think my expectations for her new novel, The Diamond Eye, were slightly too high. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it will be one of my books of the year this time.

The Diamond Eye is the story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a female sniper in the Soviet Army during World War II (and a real historical figure). Lyudmila, or ‘Mila’ as she is called in the novel, was born in Ukraine but considered herself Russian. The book was written before the current war in Ukraine began earlier this year, which gives something as simple as Mila’s choice of identity new relevance.

When we first meet Mila, she is a twenty-one-year-old history student in Kiev (now known as Kyiv, of course) and is trying to get a divorce from her husband Alexei, who seduced her as a teenager then left her to raise their son, Slavka, alone. After an encounter with Alexei at a shooting range during which Mila embarrasses herself by missing a shot, she decides to join an advanced marksmanship course so that she’ll never miss again and can prove to Slavka that she’s the equal of his father. This decision changes Mila’s life because, when Hitler invades Russia a few years later, she is handed a rifle and enlisted into the Red Army as a sniper.

We then follow two alternating storylines – one which describes Mila’s time in the army and how she acquires her reputation as ‘Lady Death’, being credited with 309 kills, and another set in 1942 as Mila embarks on a US tour in an attempt to persuade the Allies to provide support for Russia against the Nazis. The chapters set in America explore Mila’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt and a fictitious plot to assassinate the President. This invented storyline adds some tension and excitement to the book, but with Mila’s own life being so fascinating I’m not sure that it was really necessary!

The factual parts of the novel are based on Lyudmila Pavlichenko’s own memoir, Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin’s Sniper, which I haven’t read. In fact, I knew nothing at all about Mila before reading this book so everything in it was new to me. Quinn includes a very comprehensive author’s note at the end in which she explains where she tried to stick to the known facts and where she had used her imagination to fill in gaps or make the story more interesting (mainly the bits concerning Mila’s marriage to Alexei and her romantic relationships with two men she meets in the army). Some of the most surprising parts of the story, such as Mila’s friendship with the First Lady are actually true.

There’s a lot of focus on military life, weapons and tactics, which I suppose is to be expected in a novel about a sniper, but that’s never been a particular area of interest to me and reading about the Bletchley Park codebreakers in The Rose Code was much more to my taste. Still, it’s always good to learn something new and I did enjoy the parts of the book about Mila’s personal life and ambassadorial work, if not so much the parts about shooting and killing. I’m sure I’ll be reading more of Kate Quinn’s books.

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 28/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

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I loved this! I’ve never read Kate Quinn before, although she has been recommended to me several times, so I’m pleased that my first experience of her work has been such a good one. The Rose Code wasn’t a perfect book, but the few flaws that I noted were quickly outweighed by the gripping plot, strong characters and interesting historical setting.

The story takes place in and around Bletchley Park, the English country house which became the home of Britain’s World War II codebreakers, and follows three of the young women who work there. Two of them, Osla Kendall and Mab Churt, meet on the train in 1940 as they travel to Bletchley Park, unsure as to what their new jobs will involve but determined to do their best to help the war effort. Osla, a beautiful, wealthy young socialite, is desperate to prove that she is more than just a ‘silly debutante’; the outspoken and fiercely independent Mab is a working class girl from the East End of London who, having escaped from a life of poverty, wants to make a better future for herself. At Bletchley Park, both will find the opportunities they need to change their lives – and so does a third young woman, Beth Finch. Beth has grown up under the thumb of her domineering mother and looks set to remain a spinster all her life, but when Osla and Mab notice her special gift for crosswords and puzzles, they encourage her to overcome her shyness and join them at Bletchley.

Although most of the novel is set during the war years, we occasionally jump forward in time to 1947. On the eve of the royal wedding between Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, two of the three Bletchley Park women have received a summons for help from the third, who has been confined to an asylum. However, the friendship between the three of them broke down before the war ended and the two women who are free aren’t sure if they really want to help the one who is imprisoned. What happened to destroy their friendship? Was there really a traitor within Bletchley Park? And will the mysterious Rose Code ever be solved?

The Rose Code is a long novel, but was quicker to read than I’d expected because I became so engrossed in the stories of Osla, Mab and Beth. Their work at Bletchley Park is fascinating to read about, particularly Beth’s as a cryptanalyst, working with the legendary Dilly Knox. Although it all sounds very complicated – and I’m pleased the Allies didn’t have to rely on me to break the Enigma codes – Kate Quinn does a good job of explaining how the various machines were used and what the different decryption methods involved. She also explores the psychological impact of carrying out such highly confidential work; all of the codebreakers sign up to the Official Secrets Act and are banned from discussing their work with friends and family or even with people from different departments within Bletchley Park itself. This raises the interesting question of whether it’s ever acceptable to break your oath of secrecy – and if not, what sort of strain will that put on your relationships with other people?

Several real historical figures appear in The Rose Code. I have already mentioned Dilly Knox, but we also briefly meet Alan Turing, Winston Churchill…and Prince Philip, who is romantically involved with Osla before his marriage to Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen). This isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem, as Kate Quinn apparently based the character of Osla Kendall on the real life Osla Benning, who really was a Canadian debutante who worked at Bletchley Park and was Prince Philip’s girlfriend – but I don’t personally feel comfortable reading fictional portrayals of people who are still alive and this whole storyline felt unnecessary to me. I couldn’t imagine the real Philip saying some of the things he says in the book either; in fact, although I did appreciate the author’s attempts to use the slang of the time, the language in general didn’t always feel quite right to me – and there are a few annoying references to England when it should be Britain.

Still, even the Philip storyline didn’t stop me from enjoying this book because the rest of it was so interesting and compelling. There was even one scene that made me cry and I think that’s always a sign that the author has done something right! I’m sure I will be reading more books by Kate Quinn.

Thanks to HarperCollins UK for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley

Book 13/50 read for the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.