The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

EXCERPT: Thanksgiving 1954 – Washington DC
If these walls could talk. Well, they may not be talking, but they are certainly listening. And watching.
Briarwood House is as old as the century. The house has presided – brick fronted, four-storied, slightly dilapidated – over the square below for fifty-four years. It’s seen three wars, ten presidents, and countless tenants . . . but until tonight, never a murder. Now its walls smell of turkey, pumpkin pie and blood, and the house is shocked down into its foundations.
Also, just a little bit thrilled. This is the most excitement Briarwood House has had in decades.

ABOUT ‘THE BRIAR CLUB’: Washington, D.C., 1950

Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, an all-female boarding house in the heart of the US capital, where secrets hide behind respectable facades.

But when the mysterious Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbours – a poised English beauty, a policeman’s daughter, a frustrated female baseball star, and a rabidly pro-McCarthy typist – into an unlikely friendship.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their troubled lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. And when a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

MY THOUGHTS: Kate Quinn’s The Briar Club is enchanting and compelling. When I wasn’t reading, I was thinking – What is Grace’s story? Whose are the bodies? Who killed them? And why?

This is not Kate Quinn’s usual fare – yes, it is historical fiction (or should that be faction?), but it is the characters who carry this story, including Briarwood House, a character in its own right. Spanning the years from 1950 when new tenant Grace March arrives at Briarwood House to 1954 when the murders occur, The Briar Club is an intriguing story of friendship set against a backdrop of political and social change encompassing the atomic bomb, McCarthyism, the Korean war, racial discrimination and the Cold War.

I loved getting to know these characters. Grace Marsh is the mysterious woman in the tiny attic room who draws all the other characters together. Nora, the daughter and sister of Irish policeman who, although she is estranged from her family, is still expected to support them. Bea is a woman frustrated by the curveball life has thrown her. Arlene is an unhappy husband-hunting woman who doesn’t understand why no one likes her. Rekha is an older Hungarian woman, a professor and artist before she escaped to America who now earns a living shelving books at the library. Fliss is English and bringing up a baby with no family support, her doctor husband having been sent overseas to treat those injured in the war. Claire is focused only on getting out of the boarding house, her dream being a small house in the suburbs with a white picket fence. She will do whatever it takes to attain her dream. In addition to these characters there is the Nilson family – Mrs Nilson, a penny-pinching harridan who treats her children like slaves; Pete Nilson her teenage son; and Lina, Pete’s slightly younger sister. There is also a gangster, a jazz musician or two, a G-Man, a politician’s wife and a Russian spy.

Don’t expect a fast-paced intense story. The Briar Club is very much a slow burn, character focused read. And one I loved. The storyline is intricate and richly layered with historical detail that I reveled in. I loved the characters’ dramas, their relationships, and their stories which Grace seamlessly extracted from them. I really didn’t want this book to end, as satisfying as that ending is. The Briar Club elicited all the emotions from me – it is sad, funny, touching, appalling and entertaining. A perfect mix.

Don’t finish this read without reading Kate Quinn’s explanation of how this book and its characters came about. It is worth five stars on its own.

There is also the bonus of recipes for Grace’s Sun Tea, and the various other dishes served at the Thursday evening supper club and a musical recommendation to accompany the food. I had tears of laughter running down my face at Arlene’s Candle Salad.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#TheBriarClub #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: A native of southern California, Kate and her husband now live in San Diego with three rescue dogs.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Harper Collins Publishers Australia via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of The Briar Club by Kate Quinn for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

The Briar Club is due for publication 18 July 2024.