Catherine Raynes: The Briar Club and Girl Falling

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn 

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare. 

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst? 

 

Girl Falling by Hayley Scrivenor 

Finn and her best friend, Daphne, have grown up together in a small town in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Bonded by both having lost a younger sister to suicide, they've always had a close - sometimes too close - friendship. Now in their twenties, their lives have finally started to Daphne is at university and Finn is working in the Mountains, as well as falling in love with a beautiful newcomer called Magdu. 

Unused to sharing Finn, Daphne starts to act up in ways that will allow her to maintain the control over her best friend she's always relished. Then, one fateful day, Finn, Daphne and Magdu all go mountain climbing - and Magdu falls to her death. Is it suicide, or a terrible accident - or has something more sinister happened? 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from newstalk ZEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
News Talks B twenty one to twelve. For message on
the text, Jack, where do I find that an amazing
interview with Sophie Pasco? I want to share it with
my mates easy news Talks dB dot co dot nz
Ford slash Jack. That should be up there very shortly.
So if you didn't hear our feature interview with Sophie
Pasco this morning, it was just one of those really
amazing I don't know kind of yeah. She was just
so open, you know, it's just see what It's just,

(00:33):
it is so nice to speak to, you know, athletes
who have lots of other things in their lives as well,
and you know, who are able to speak with the
kind of eloquence that she did this morning. So really
enjoyed that interview and that's the place to go if
you would like to hear it. Twenty to twelve. That
means it's time to catch up with Katherin Rain's our
book reviewer. She's got two reads for us this weekend.
Gal to Catherine Morning Jack. Okay, let's begin with The

(00:55):
Brier Club by Kate Quinn.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
So this is set in the nineteen fifties in America.
Who is they are deep in the paranora of McCarthyism
and deep suspicion and this this laand lady missus Nelson,
and she's suspicious of everything. And there's the Korean War
going on in the background, and gangs and crops and
corruption and prejudice and judgment to name a few kind
of strong themes going through this book. And the story

(01:18):
actually begins in nineteen fifty four at a woman's boarding
house called the Briarwood House on Thanksgiving Day and a
brutal murder occurs, and one of the borders might be
the culprit, but the identity of the actual victim, no
one knows who it is, although they know it took
place in the room of a border named Grace March.
And then you jump back four years to nineteen fifty
and you follow thirteen year old Pete Nelson, who shoulders

(01:41):
only more responsibilities than he should at a young age
to help his mother out as a handyman at the
boarding house, and he takes care of his sister who
has a learning disorder, and so through his perspective you
get to meet all of the boarders. So Grace March herself,
who's this very mysterious widow, and she doesn't talk about
her past, but she's really good friends and manages to
create friends with the other borders. And there's a young mother, Fliss,

(02:02):
who's doctor husband works in San Diego, and Nora who's
twenty works for the National Archives, and many other characters
that are kind of engrossed in the story, and each
of them different backgrounds and dealing with their own demons
and secrets and regrets. And they gather in Graces at
a room for dinners every Thursday night, and this brings
a sense of friendship, even though there Landlady missus Nielsen

(02:23):
is not particularly pleasant. And each chapter alternates between the
residents backgrounds and their current lives, and chapters also told
from the perspective of the house, which adds the sort
of supernatural element to it, and they you know, and
you can tell some stories and secrets, and so that
element of the supernatural and caught up in these lives.
And it starts slowly that it builds in its intensity

(02:44):
in suspense and really interesting the way where it ends up.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Right, Yeah, cool, Okay, So that's the Briar Club by
Kate Quinn. You've also read Girl Falling by Hailey Shrivener.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
So this is a psychological thriller, and it's told in
alternating chapters, and they distinguish is either before or after,
and it's about the aftermath of Finn's girlfriend, mug To,
who falls to her death while hiking with Finn and
Finn's best friend, Daphne, And you go back in time
and Finn and Daphne are childhood friends and they share
this united by shared grief, and they find their paths

(03:16):
diverging as they enter their twenties and Finn's falling in
love with Magdo's, a newcomer to the group, and her
presence threatens Daphne's control over her best friend, and she
feels her grip on Finn's slipping out, and she begins
to act in these very destructive ways, and their relationship
spirals towards this tragic end where Magdoo loses her life
and the mystery in it lies and whether it's accident, suicide,

(03:38):
or something much more sinister. Yeah, and Finn's overwhelmed by
Daphne's influence and her great lengths to maintain control So
what you get is this murder, mystery, thriller, grief, toxic
female best friends and relationships and narratives about her. We
tell we are and you have this a lot of
the stories told by Finn, and she's really unreliable in

(04:00):
the way she tells her story. So it keeps you
guessing right to the end. And those secrets and those
who keep them and how they shape friendships and yeah,
it keeps you on the edge of your seat and
the interrelationships between the three of them and how the
story unfolds from the very tragic events at the start.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Right, Okay, cool, that sounds really good, Thank you, Catherine.
So those books Girl Falling by Haley Skrevner and The
Brier Club by Kate Quinn, both of them will be
up on our website.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
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