Book Review: "The Briar Club"

Kate Quinn offers up yet another of her compulsively readable historical fictions filled with meticulous detail, propulsive plotting, and badass heroines.

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There are some historical novelists whose works I consider to be among the very best in the genre, and Kate Quinn is one of those. I’ve been reading everything she’s published ever since I picked up a copy of Mistress of Rome way back in my grad school days, and I’ve devoured every book that she’s written. She’s one of those writers who has a true gift for historical fiction, and no matter what period she takes as her subject–whether ancient Rome or Renaissance Italy or 20th Century America–she knows how to bring the past to life and how to give us formidable women characters we love.

Her newest release is The Briar Club. Set largely during the 1950s, it follows an eclectic group of women, all of whom live in the same boardinghouse and who band together for a once-a-week supper club they dub The Briar Club. The story is split into several different time periods. The one in the diegetic present focuses on a police investigation of two dead bodies at the boardinghouse, while at various points in the past we gain insights into the various members of the Briar Club and their lives, loves, and struggles. As quickly becomes clear, everyone has their fair share of secrets and, for all that they all have their own romances, it’s really the bonds between the women that matter the most.

Let me say upfront: I loved this book. It’s vintage Kate Quinn, with badass heroines, meticulously crafted and propulsive plot, and rich period detail. Quinn has long been one of those authors who truly manages to make the past feel alive and vital, as if we are right there, and The Briar Club is no exception. She gives a textured portrait of the 1950s, including elements of the Red Scare, anxieties over the atomic bomb, cooking contests, and Communist spies. Quinn is one of those authors who wears her historical learning lightly, and she manages to make us feel as if we are right there with the characters without drowning us in historical detail. Moreover, she manages to craft a portrait of the decade that is remarkably nuanced, and while The Briar Club doesn’t lionize the era, neither does she paint it as some sort of conformist hellscape. Instead it is as complicated and textured as any other period of American history, for both good and ill.

As with so many of Quinn’s other books, its formidable heroines are the heart and soul of the story. Whether it’s the British Fliss and her struggles with postpartum depression or Bea and her efforts to stay involved in baseball, these are people who feel as real and as complex as any that we might meet in our real lives. Each individual vignette gives us important insight into what makes them tick, their loves and heartbreaks and obsessions. None of them are perfect, of course, but The Briar Club allows us to love them anyway, precisely because they’re so dynamic and compelling.

In some ways, though, it’s Grace who is the center of so much of the action. I won’t say why, exactly, but suffice it to say that, like so many of the other women who take up residence in the house, she’s been through a lot. As a result, she makes it a point to take everyone else under her wing, sheltering them and giving them a leg up when they need it the most. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she’s my favorite character but, well, she’s kind of my favorite character. It certainly helps that for most of the novel she’s something of an enigma, but her story ends up being even more fascinating–and, arguably, tragic–than that of almost all of the other characters.

What I truly loved about this book, though, was how well it demonstrated the many different kinds of women that made up 1950s American society. There were housewives, to be sure, and there were those who wanted to be housewives, but there were also nurses and baseball players and lesbians and spies, all of them doing the best they could in a world still reeling from the advent of atomic technology and trying to make sense of the new world that it had created. I was particularly pleased to see some queer representation. We tend to think that all queer people were miserable or self-loathing in the 1950s–and there’s certainly some truth to that belief–but Quinn doesn’t take the easy road in this regard. Instead she gives us a pair of queer women who are absolutely determined to forge their own life, no matter what they have to do to bring it into being. 

And then there’s the house itself. As the police investigate the death of two men–whose identities remain unclear until near the very end–the house itself becomes something of a character in its own right. This is actually quite a neat little conceit, as it provides an external perspective on these women and their extraordinary friendship. It becomes clear throughout these moments that the women are as important to the house as the house is to them.

I know it’s rather cliche to say that a book is a page-turner, but I can’t really think of any other way to describe The Briar Club. It’s the kind of book that keeps you up past your bedtime every night, simply because you can’t put it down, so desperate are you to find out what happens. Part of this is because the story opens with a double homicide, but it’s also because Quinn makes her heroines and their stories so damn compelling that you just want to spend as much time with them as you can and find out what happens to them.

The ending is, I think, a little bittersweet, if only because some of the characters have had to give up quite a lot in order to achieve their dreams and desires. The fact that so many of these stories are drawn from the historical record makes them that much more poignant. 

All in all, this is a truly magnificent piece of historical fiction. The only problem is now I have to wait for her next release!