Breakaway Books

Authored by Kate Quinn; Published July 2024; Historical Fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️

I love the way that Kate Quinn exhibits US history in The Briar Club. I read most of this book in a single day—despite the seemingly small stakes, it was tough to put down.

The Briar Club tells the story of Briarwood House, a women’s boarding house in Washington DC in the 1950s. When Grace March moves in, she makes it her life’s mission to build a true community in the building, despite the landlady’s strict rules and penny pinching ways. Seeing history through the eyes of ordinary women is rare, and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. Major political events—the Red Scare, the work of the HUAC Committee, segregation—are narrated alongside the stories of the women’s baseball league and the working lives of single women. 

It’s hard not to love how Grace chose to live her life in Briarwood House. Hosting her housemates every week, despite her tiny space and sub-par cooking facilities, Grace showed the warmth that hospitality can bring. She showed so much love to her housemates just by noticing: seeing when they are sad, when they are overwhelmed, when they need help. Mostly, what Grace gave over and over was a dose of common sense and perspective. I wish we could all be neighbors like Grace, fearless and loving.

The house itself is a character in the book, and while I wasn’t wild about that as a framing structure, it did serve its purpose. The physical transformation that the house underwent as Grace made the housemates into friends served as a beautiful if obvious demonstration. In the end, even the villains are mostly redeemed—the unfriendly roommate saved, the landlady disempowered. The whole attitude of the book is warm and welcoming. 

The Briar Club shows us how to be good neighbors—I was certainly inspired!