The Briar Club
It’s Thanksgiving 1954, Washington DC, and a boarding house for working women, Briarwood House, is the scene of a murder. There’s a corpse upstairs, detectives have arrived, and the residents mill around in the kitchen while the landlady has hysterics. So begins The Briar Club, a story of female friendship – and murder – told from multiple points of view, including, unusually, the house itself. When Grace March arrives at Briarwood in June 1950, it is a depressing place. Pete Nilsson, the landlady’s teenage son, dreams of a life like that of his hero, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, but in reality, he’s at his tetchy mother’s beck and call. He is the first of Briarwood’s inhabitants to be drawn to Grace who, while remaining something of an enigma, manages to bring out the best in her fellow boarders, instituting attic room dinners and offering help where needed. The different boarders – lonely mother Fliss, hard-working Nora, baseball-playing Beatrice, and aging artist Reka – take turns to confront a range of challenges and hardships faced by women in 1950s America, as the story builds up to the reveal of who has been murdered, why, and by whom.
A clever structure and great characterization make this a real page-turner. Quinn addresses serious issues: McCarthyism, domestic abuse, organized crime, immigration, espionage, and racism, all while effortlessly charming the reader with beguiling characters trying to overcome the challenges life throws at them. When Grace’s secrets are finally revealed in a dramatic conclusion, the inhabitants of Briarwood must ask themselves how strong the bonds they have formed at Briarwood really are. As entertaining as it is illuminating, The Briar Club does not disappoint.
