The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

Amy  


historical fiction

Murder has been committed at the Briarwood boarding house in 1954. The Briar Club, named for the weekly dinner party of the residents, introduces readers to everyone living in the house, one section at a time, over the prior four years. The landlady and the residents are all women of various ages and backgrounds who are on their own. The “man of the house” is the landlady’s son. The house, a speaking character itself, acts as the narrator of the murder investigation. Who was killed? Who did it?

This novel was different from Kate Quinn’s other novels I’ve read. The Briar Club had a whimsical element --the house talking to the reader. And this is the first of Quinn’s novels that didn’t take place during WWII. Granted, most of these characters survived the war and one, in particular, had a significant personal WWII history. But, still, this one felt different. I liked it! As with her other novels, the main characters are strong women, there is an emphasis on female friendships and found family, and the settings and characters jumped off the page. All the Briarwood House residents had difficulties--many unique to the 1950s. The story covered their backgrounds, struggles, and growth in addition to their potential for wanting someone dead or being the victim. The importance of making personal connections in a difficult world was a takeaway.

Foodies will love the characters’ recipes included in the book. I thought the way Quinn included them in the novel was very organic and authentic. Personally, I loved the section about art and learning about the effort to popularize contemporary artists in the US after WWII.

The narrator, Saskia Maarleveld has narrated all of Quinn’s audiobooks I’ve heard. She’s a fantastic voice actor with a multitude of voices and is a specialist with accents. She did an incredible job as usual. However, most interesting to me was the interview with Quinn and Maarleveld at the end of the audiobook. I was shocked to hear that Maarleveld’s natural speaking voice sounds nothing like her narrations! In fact, knowing this, I do wish she’d change the voice she gives to generic omniscient narrators. Her “narrator voice”, when she’s not reading as one of the characters, tends to make things seem troubled or foreboding, somehow….even when she is just relaying ambivalent factual information. I’ve tried to analyze this so I can describe it. I believe I get this impression because she exhales the rest of her breath with the last syllable of phrases and her voice register drops a bit. And when she does this with every sentence, it sounds formal and foreboding. Now that I’ve heard her real voice, I’d prefer she use that for her “narrator voice”!  I’m tempted to give her an A for holding out on us with her real voice but I fear I’m being too nitpicky so I’ll give her an A+ for an otherwise outstanding job.