The Briar Club, by Kate Quinn

 

Characters
Briarwood House   Mrs. Nilsson “Doilies” – landlady Pete – son, forced to leave school and work Lina – daughter, mother would not fix lazy eye Mr. Nilsson – kept away by wife   Felicity Orton “Fliss” – 2A Angela – daughter Dan – husband, doctor in Japan Helped Sydney Sutherland get birth control   Reka Muller – 2B – German immigrant Art professor in Germany Otto – husband, deceased Three valuable Klimt sketches stolen from her family during war   Bea Verretti - 3A Phys teacher and sub in Home Economics All-American Girls Professional Baseball League – Fort Wayne Daises “The Swinging Sicilian” Seeing Harlan Adams Became scout for Washington Senators   Claire Hallett – 3B Three jobs: Junior assistant to Margaret Chase Smith, errands for Sydney Sutherland, porn model Stealing from housemates   Arlene Hupp – 3C Typist – worked for government	Nora Walsh – 4A Works at National Archives and Crispy Bacon Timothy – brother, policeman, stole her money Siobhan and Timmy Jr. – family Xavier Byrne – gangster, boyfriend Duke – dog     Grace Marsh – 4B Formally Comrade Galina Stepanova – USSR Sent to America as a spy with Kirill Lensky/Bob McDowell Defected Hosted Thursday dinners
	Joe Reiss – neighbor, musician Claude Cormier -drummer, Joe’s band mate, flew with Tuskegee Airmen   Senator Sutherland Barrett – son Had three stolen Klimt sketches Sydney – wife, beaten by Barrett Bear – son   Harlan Adams – worked for FBI, initially dated Arlene but then Bea   Dr. John Rock – Dan Orton’s uncle Pioneer in birth control pill

 

NOTE: Page numbers are from the 2025 paperback edition.

1.      Discuss your reading experience.  If you read the author’s note before you finished the book, did you obey the first paragraph telling you not to do so?

2.      Did you like the house as a character?

3.      Discuss the other characters.  What was interesting about them?  Were there any you could connect with?

4.      Did you like the fact that there were so many unanswered questions as you were reading such as who the murder victims were and who Kitty was that Grace was writing postcards to?

5.      As you were reading, who did you think were the murder victims?

6.      Were you surprised when you discovered that Claire and Sydney Sutherland were having an affair?

7.      Looking back, what scenes do you remember?  One of my favorites was when Pete was asking about the birth control and Fliss told him that in a few years he would be very happy to know about it (page 410).  Also, I liked how Bea’s housemates all came and taught her Home Economics classes.

8.      There was a lot going on in this book. Did you have any trouble keeping everything straight?

9.      I thought a large part of this book was patriotism and appreciation for our country.  When Grace reflected on what she had been told about America she thought, “And once you went looking for the lies, you found them everywhere.  You looked around at a land you’d been told your entire life was filled with enemies and evil and found it instead to be a land of plenty and peace” (page 334).  Do you agree?

10.  There was quite a lot of actual events that happened in America in the book such as Joe McCarthy, JFK’s proposal to Jackie (page 263), and the nuclear bomb test in Nevada (page 187).  Did that add to your reading?

Did you try, or are you tempted, to make any of the recipes included in the book?