I love Kate Quinn’s writing. Her books are among my all-time favorites, and I reread them often. She has a masterful skill for blending historical fiction with thrilling mystery. Her female characters are always compelling, intelligent, and strong. Quinn’s books usually take place at pivotal moments in history and war, featuring layers of secrets and personal turmoil that weave right in with the politics. The Briar Club embodies all of these traits in a wonderful tale of solidarity, secrets, and women who fight back.
In McCarthy-era Washington D.C., there is a boarding house for women called Briarwood House. It is, at the start, an unremarkable house that’s seen better days, run with an iron fist by a bitter Mrs. Nilsson and her two children Pete and Lina. That all starts to change when Mrs. Grace March comes to rent the smallest room on the top floor. Almost immediately she gathers her fellow boarders with a Thursday night supper club, eating and drinking and discussing the news of the day.
Before long, this Briar Club breathes new life into the house and into its ladies as they face the challenges of the Red Scare, and of womanhood in the 1950’s. While the ladies know very little about Grace March, she gets all of them to open up to her, fixing their problems however she can. Together they build a community and help each other through heartbreak, injury, injustice, and abuse.
From the beginning, each chapter begins with a new perspective, moving through each member of the Briar Club, starting in 1950 and moving through the next four years. At the end of each chapter, readers get a glimpse of Thanksgiving 1954, where a violent end changes everything. It’s historical fiction meets murder mystery, in a way that’s uniquely Kate Quinn, and unlike anything else I’ve ever read before.
There are few things that bring me such innocent delight as a book with recipes in it, especially those written with heartfelt notes about the ambiance in which those dishes should be enjoyed. It’s why Like Water for Chocolate has stubbornly stuck with me nigh on fifteen years after I first read it. But to find this kind of heartfelt use of food in a McCarthy-era historical mystery is an unexpected sheer delight. I want to make each and every one of these recipes.
The Briar Club is a bit of a tricky read for someone who’s accustomed to romances. Things don’t always pan out with the happily ever after that those books have trained my brain to expect, but it’s worth it. And there is a catharsis for these characters, even if it doesn’t play out with a traditional happy ending.
The Briarwood house is a home with a point of view, because why not? What a lovely idea that a home has a point of view. It adds a layer of spirituality to an otherwise stark, very human story.
The Briar Club is filled with strong characters, all from nearly impossibly different walks of life. A teenage boy. A bitter aging Hungarian woman. A curvy con artist. A Texan busybody. A British new mom. An Irish American woman working at the national archives. A mobster. A Bostonian PE teacher. A senator’s daughter in law. And the mysterious newcomer who brings them all together.
As I typed that out, I realized there are a great many essential characters in this story, some of whom I didn’t even mention for fear of an even more unwieldy paragraph. But reading this story never felt overwhelming or confusing, despite the numerous characters, maybe because they are all so distinct, and utterly necessary to the story as a whole.
By the end of this book, I was trying to cry as silently as possible so as to not wake my fiancé. The conclusion was incredibly touching and felt so real in the context of this story.
The Briar Club is a glimmering portrayal of female friendship and families built from troubled times. It seamlessly blends mystery and historical fiction and places the reader firmly in 1950s Washington D.C. and within the walls of the Briarwood house in a way that only phenomenal writing can do.
Writing: 5
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