The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (Harper Collins, $36.99).
BOOK REVIEW written by Louise Ward, co-owner of Wardini Books.
It’s 1954 in Washington DC, Briarwood House is stirring, excited to find that a drama is unfurling within its walls. There has been a murder in the second attic apartment, and 17 people are in the kitchen in various states
of distress. One of them is the murderer.
Cut to four years earlier. Mrs Nilsson rents out rooms in her rambling home to female boarders. This way, the single mother keeps her head above water, looking forward to the day when her teenage son, Pete, and needy little daughter, Lina, can pull their financial weight. Pete looks out for Lina, writes letters to an absent father who never replies, and falls in innocent love with a variety of the boarders.
Enter Mrs Grace March: confident, creative, and mysterious. Whilst Pete falls in love, Grace unpacks her meagre belongings and begins to draw together the disparate borders: young, ambitious Nora, old and grumpy Mrs Muller and bouncy British Fliss.
The Briar Club is formed – a weekly dinner in Grace’s tiny room on the one night when the disapproving Mrs Nilsson is out.
