The Briar Club: A Novel
“Quinn evocatively balances the outward cheerfulness of the 1950s with historical observations exploring racism, misogyny, homophobia and political persecution in this sharply drawn, gripping novel.” - People Magazine
The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.
Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?
Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.
A beautiful, foil cover, first edition.
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Community Reviews
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.
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