The Briar Club

The Briar Club is the most recent historical fiction novel by the New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Kate Quinn. Quinn has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga and two books set during the Italian Renaissance. The Alice Network (2017), The Huntress (2019), The Rose Code (2021), The Diamond Eye (2022), and The Briar Club are all set in the 20th century. Quinn’s novels feature strong female protagonists who must navigate the constraints of their male-dominated cultures to assert their right to self-determination. Her books have been translated into multiple languages.

The Briar Club falls under the categories of historical thrillers and women’s historical fiction. As the tenants in a Washington, DC, boarding house try to cover up two murders and survive the McCarthy era, the novel explores the themes of Finding Support and Overcoming Differences in a Circle of Friends, Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism, and The Struggle for Freedom.

This study guide refers to the HarperCollins 2024 e-book edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The novel features depictions of domestic violence, racial violence, psychological abuse, anti-gay bias, racism, suicide, and murder.

Plot Summary

The novel is set entirely in Washington, DC, between the years 1950 and 1956. However, the narrative does not present events sequentially. The story begins with a murder on Thanksgiving in 1954 and alternates between this event and the lives of tenants in a boardinghouse at various periods between 1950 and 1956. While the novel uses a limited third-person narrative technique throughout, the point of view shifts in each chapter to one of a group of eight characters. The narrative intersperses their stories with commentary from the point of view of the Briarwood boarding house itself.

The novel opens with a prologue the Briarwood House presents. It has just witnessed two murders that took place within its walls during a Thanksgiving dinner in 1954. The story swiftly cuts away from this scene to follow a 12-year-old boy named Pete, the son of the boardinghouse’s owner, Mrs. Nilsson. Pete is in the process of showing a fourth-floor attic apartment to a new tenant named Grace March. The other tenants in the building rarely speak to one another except in passing. They live isolated lives, but Grace has a plan to change things. She invites everyone to an impromptu dinner every Thursday evening in her flat. The price of admission is one article of canned food. She also busies herself painting flowers and vines on the gloomy hallway walls.

The house, which has long existed in a state of torpor, begins to wake up and appreciates Grace’s attempts to brighten the living space. The rest of the tenants also show signs of positive change under Grace’s benign influence and the support of the other members of the dinner group that is dubbed the “Briar Club.”

Each of the book’s chapters details the problematic lives of the other tenants. Nora is an ambitious employee at the National Archives who wants to escape the restrictive influence of her Irish American family. She becomes romantically entangled with a man who has gangland family connections. The elderly Reka is a Hungarian refugee who fled Nazi Germany, but the United States senator who sponsored her entry into the country robbed her of some valuable artwork. English wife and mother Fliss cares for a baby alone while her husband is overseas in Korea. She wants to return to a career in nursing, devoting her time to contraception research, but she feels this is impossible.

Bea is a former professional women’s baseball player whose knee injury prevents her from returning to the game. She can’t find satisfying work outside the world of baseball. Claire hoards money to buy a home for herself. She also falls in love with a politician’s abused wife and wants to run away with her. Arlene works for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and believes Senator Joseph McCarthy’s propaganda about the threat of communism. Her judgmental attitude alienates her from all the other tenants. Grace is a former Soviet spy who ran away from her deep-cover assignment and wants to live a normal life as an American, hoping her fake husband/fellow spy will never find her. As the story progresses, each of the characters finds a way to surmount their difficulties and build a better future for themselves. On Thanksgiving 1954, Grace’s past catches up with her, and her spy partner arrives, intending to kill her. Instead, she kills him to protect her friends. When the abusive husband of Claire’s lover arrives drunk, Arlene thinks he is another spy and clubs him to death with a baseball bat. The tight bonds of friendship that have developed among members of the Briar Club compel them to protect one another. They pass off the deaths as a robbery gone wrong. No one is charged with murder, and each member of the Briar Club goes on to live a fulfilling life—even ex-communist Grace.