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It’s 1950 in Washington, D.C., and a mother of two has turned her large house into a boardinghouse for women. She has a lot of rules for the females who stay in the small apartments. So the occupants of Briarwood House keep to themselves and try to stay clear of the stingy Mrs. Nilsson.
But when Grace March moves into the tiny attic room, things slowly begin to change. Grace invites the other women to her room on Thursday nights when “Doilies” Nilsson goes out for bridge night. They start to get to know each other during these evening sessions of “the Briar Club.” And as they get to know each other, they begin to help each other, and Grace’s influence somehow begins to heal each of them.
The Briar Club focuses on each woman one at a time. Fliss is a young British wife whose doctor husband is deployed across the world in the Korean War. She is struggling hard with being a mother to her little girl but puts on a happy veneer. Nora is dedicated to moving up in the ranks in the National Archives but falls for a gangster. Bea is a baseball player whose injury ended her career in the All-American Girls Baseball League. Claire hasn’t been a great friend to any of the women but is working at anything she can to save money to achieve security. Reka is an old Hungarian woman who is bitter about what feels like insurmountable losses.
Grace is kind and self-assured and encourages everyone to talk and unburden themselves. But she always manages to avoid sharing anything real about her own background. When the truth comes out, it leads to shocking violence and causes everyone to have to make a difficult decision.
I had never read any of Kate Quinn’s books, but I was drawn to The Briar Club because of its excellent reviews and the element of mystery. It kept me fascinated throughout; I was so interested to read about each woman and see their progression. The setting in the McCarthy era was fascinating. I appreciated reading at the end Quinn’s explanation of all the facts and real people she included in the novel.
The mystery, as it turns out, was a very small part of the book, but I enjoyed the journey so much that I didn’t mind that. It was fun to see how that all came together and was resolved.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 16 uses of strong language, around 35 instances of moderate profanity, about 30 uses of mild language, about 14 uses of British profanity, and 40 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content is sprinkled throughout the book, and there is some detail but it’s all fairly brief. A woman poses nude for a photographer and it’s mentioned several times. Violence includes several scenes of the aftermath of domestic violence, some quite bad. A character is involved with the mafia and commits murder and beatings. Two people are killed, with descriptions of a lot of blood.
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