The Briar Club: Another Great Read from Kate Quinn

 

 

The Briar Club (2024)

By Kate Quinn

William Morrow, 432 pages

★★★★

 

The Briar Club is another affirmation that Kate Quinn is one heck of a writer. In her latest novel she takes us the Washington, D.C. in the 1950s, a time of both optimism and the Red Scare. The title derives from Briarwood House, ousHousea boarding home for women. Leave it to Quinn to personify the house without making it sound hokey. The house “speaks” to readers in interstitial chapters, an important mystery-building device.

 

Quinn excels at characterization. Briarwood House is run by Mrs. Nilsson, who is so grumpy and rulebound that boarders nickname her “Doilies.” To say that she cuts corners does an injustice to right angles. Her husband’s absence is somewhat enigmatic, but young Pete and his maligned, cross-eyed sister Lina also live at Briarwood and are as delightful as their mother is acerbic.

 

Quinn populates Briarwood with a cast that brings mayhem, sisterhood, and color that contrasts with the stodgy grayness of Doilies. Grace March is the first to add touches of lightness. She’s gregarious and the proverbial “pistol,” a rulebreaker who can charm with offers of sun tea. Choose your metaphor for Grace’s room-freshening project that evolves into painting vines that extend down the staircase from her fourth floor rental. When Mrs. Nilsson is absent for her weekly card game, Grace holds impromptu parties in her room that become ever-more-elaborate dinners in which each resident, Pete included, cook a specialty. You could add “by hook or crook,” as no one has a lot of money. One of the book’s more unusual features is the inclusion of recipes–from colcannon to strawberry fool–used by the Thursday night cooks.

The other core residents are Nora Walsh, Reka Muller, Felicity Orton, Beatrice Verrette, Claire Hallett, and Arlene Hupp. Quinn gives each her own chapter that provides deep background. Grace is the pivot around which most things occur, including men sneaking in and out, a no-no in Doilies’ book. Nora is there to escape from her family, including her crooked cop brother who steals from her. She works at the National Archives and finds herself pursued romantically by Xavier Bryne, who is either a gangster or a “businessman.” Reka, once Professor Muller, is a widowed Czech refugee struggling to make ends meet by shelving library books whilst grumbling over the constant bawling of Orton’s baby. (“Fliss” is English and her American doctor husband is stationed overseas.) Bea is a junior high phys. ed. teacher who pines for the days when she was a star in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. (Think A League of Their Own.) For their parts, Claire works for Senator Margaret Chase Smith, which irks Arlene, a diehard nationalist who works for the House Un-American Activities Committee and thinks Rep. Joseph McCarthy is a hero.

Count on everyone having secrets they hold close to the vest even while bonding with each other (except the snitty Arlene). Among the things that makes Quinn an engaging writer is that she parcels out information in drips rather than rushing torrents. She also makes ancillary characters come alive, even those with mere cameos. In The Briar Club, most of those in supporting roles are male, with the notable exception of Sydney Sutherland, the wife of the social-climbing Barrett who hopes to be a communist-hunting U.S. Senator like his father. Other men who play roles in The Briar Club are Pete, Xavier, a hood named George, Nora’s male family members, jazz musician Joe and his Black friend Claude, Bob McDowell, and FBI agent Harland Adams who dates several of the Briarwood House women.

If this sounds complex, allow me to tantalize you with more: criminal gangs, Gustav Klimt, an overwhelmed mother, women trying to break the 1950s glass ceiling, stolen tomatoes, baseball, battering, forbidden love, a Betty Crocker bakeoff, Operation Longhorn, two in-house murders, spies, and a surprise ending that leads to an even more unexpected coda. All of this takes place against the Korean War and the rise and fall of McCarthyism. It is to Quinn’s credit that none of these seems labored or didactic, even when Quinn slips on occasion with a few details that seem too modern.  Add splashes of humor and The Briar Club is like The Thursday Murder Club meets a satire of the 1950s, murder, espionage, and proto-feminism.

Rob Weir