The Briar Club: A Novel

this was a great book! i really enjoyed the deep dive into each character (character development) it was such an interesting way to tell the story! loved the recipes!!!! i learned some things about the 50’s that i never knew. the narrator was the absolute best ever! my new favorite! i highly recommend this book.

Excellent!

This book is user in the 1950s and deals with McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Five young women live together in a house run by Mrs Nilsson who has a teenage son and daughter. She runs a tight ship and no men are allowed in the building. However, when she goes to her weekly bingo games, things change. Grace starts gathering everyone together for potluck dinners. It’s not an easy task in a very small room with only a hot plate but the women make it work.
A dead body in one of the rooms brings the attention of the police. Who is it? How did he get inside? Everyone clams up and no one will admit they know anything. It is such a beguiling mystery.

Then the book goes back four years and we learn more about the women and the proprietor who runs the boarding house. There’s the mysterious and flamboyant Grace with her string of boyfriends, Fliss, a young mother with a baby who is waiting for her husband to return from the service. Nora has worked hard to educate herself and is very proud to be working at the National Archives. However she worries that her involvement with a gangster will jeopardize her job. There’s also Mrs Muller in 3A, Arlene who throws herself into the Red Scare, and later, Beatrice, a frustrated female baseball star.

Mrs Nilsson “Doilies” is a shrew and not even nice to her own children, Peter and Claire. What follows is a fascinating look at the. 1950s and the frustrations of women. They are limited in their professions, tied down by children, not allowed the freedom or ability for financial independence.

Phenomenal character development in this novel. All the characters, like the house they live in, display facades: presenting themselves as individuals they would like to be, or as others expect them to be, rather than owning their genuine identities. Eventually, circumstances force the characters to show their true selves, although these revelations come at their own price.

I enjoyed the book and all of the characters, some so likable and others just horrible. Very interesting characters during a time in history where there was much fear among citizens (McCarthy era).