The Alice Network

Author: Kate Quinn
Reviewer: Inopinion

Content Warnings

Abortion, Torture, Unplanned Pregnancy, Description of Wartime Atrocities

Summary

A stand-alone Historical Fiction, this book follows three primary character arcs, with the niggling trick that two are the same woman. The book opens with Charlie St. Clair crossing the Atlantic and launching a search for her cousin, Rose, who last made contact at the height of the German occupation of France during World War II. Charlie finds an unlikely resource in Eve Gardiner, a 56 year-old violent drunk who was the last person to report on the search for Rose; and Eve’s driver, ex-con and ex-soldier, Finn. With her promise to pay, Charlie sets off into post-war France expecting to encounter the residue of the recent past. But instead, through Eve’s begrudging reveals, uncovers Eve’s younger self.

Eve wasn’t always a wreck downing bottles for dinner. As an English spy in German-occupied France in 1915, she walked a tightrope collecting information while undercover. And, as with all good Historical Fictions with two timelines, these two arcs intersect.

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Review

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Appeal:

Readers who appreciate stories like YA Historical Fiction The Book Thief or the adult novel The Guernsey Literary and Sweet Potato Peel Pie Society may also enjoy Alice Quinn’s The Alice Network. It contains adult topics like unplanned pregnancy, abortion, wartime atrocities, and depictions of torture, but it also contains strong statements on feminism, toxic masculinity, and perseverance. It can be dark but has lighter moment in equal measure.

Review:

What an insidious villain! Any time I look back on history, I try to find both sides of every story. It’s the point of learning about history: uncovering why it happened. And, of course, that’s true when looking at large troop movements and local lives alike. So, as the story lays out Rene and his business profiting from the Germans, there was a part of me that sort of said, “Good on ya.” He took money from the Germans, employed locals, and, had the Germans won, he would have been in a better position. It’s a very logical decision. But then there’s the other side, the side that condemns the collaborators. The side that looks on men who profited and strongly considers stringing them up to the lamp posts. Maybe not all of them deserved the vitriol and the violence that came to them, but Quinn’s Rene’ Bordelou couldn’t beg sympathy out of me. She builds him up slowly from strict businessman to harasser to toxic poet and then to an ultimately depraved sociopath who tortured, murdered, and massacred with impunity. He’s the scariest of villains because he is a mirror of reality, something that could easily exist around the corner or in your family tree.

The complexity of Eve Gardiner amazed me. When we first meet Eve, she’s in her fifties and perpetually seeing through a whiskey haze. She’s disfigured, gruff, and curses unlike any other woman of the times. She is a miserable sort that begs to be opened up and explored. Then Quinn takes us all the way back to a younger Eve that’s unrecognizable in comparison. She’s not all that dissimilar to Charlie. She has a nievite and wide-eyed wonder about her. She sparkles in her newness and shines as she sees her potential. And even as we follow her through her narrative as a younger woman, we get these flashes to the older Eve coming back to life in a sense. It’s not until towards the end that you can set each one side-by-side and understand the elder Eve. It is a masterful, and suspended unveiling that kept me moving from chapter to chapter, eager to find the moment of transformation.

Charlie St. Clair also has an arc from innocent college girl in trouble to steadfast, loyal, and fierce woman ready to plan her own life on her own terms. It’s not as complex as Eve’s but it’s a counterbalance to the weight of Eve’s narrative. There’s less of a surprise with Charlie. She is exactly what you expect on an easily sighted trajectory and she manages to hit the mark with ease if not grace.

It’s Charlie’s storyline, her search for Rose, that brings the rating down a star. While it was plausible and possible and even completed on a predictable note, it was a little flat. To use another metaphor, because we need one so desperately, it was the buildup to a storm that never flashed lightning. The completion of Eve’s arc nearly made up for it.