Our August CC Book Club selection is The Alice Network by Kate Quinn, a New York Times bestseller and one of NPR’s Great Reads of 2017. The novel’s protagonist, Charlie St. Clair, is an American who travels to Europe in 1947 and crosses paths with Eve Gardiner, a former member of The Alice Network—a real-life group of women spies who worked for the British during World War I. Charlie and Eve join forces and set out in search of Charlie’s cousin Rose, who went missing years earlier.
“This fast-paced story offers courageous heroines, villains you love to hate, and dramatic life-or-death stakes…Quinn’s complex story and engaging characters have something to offer just about everyone.” - Library Journal (starred review)
“In The Alice Network, the lives of two indomitable women intertwine in a plot crackling with suspense.” - NPR
Lol I’m jealous of your eyesight! I purchased it on one of my kindles but I’m reading it on my iPad so I don’t have to turn the page after 20 or so words.
Thought I would pull this up as a reminder that discussion begins on August 1. It’s a quick read. Even if you haven’t started it yet, you can easily finish by the first of August.
Since people seem to like The Alice Network I thought I would put in a plug for two other Kate Quinn books: The Rose Code (my favorite of hers) and The Diamond Eye (which I just re-read last week and honestly liked more the second time I read it than the first). And I really like her short story (available on Kindle for $1.99) called Signal Moon.
It’s August 1st! Welcome to our discussion of The Alice Network by Kate Quinn.
This novel took longer to read than expected because I did a lot of stopping to look up historical events and characters. I knew very little (okay, nothing) about female spies during World War I. It was an enthralling bit of history — what these women endured was both fascinating and horrendous. I was not a huge fan of the Quinn’s writing style. The Finn-Charlotte love scenes were a little too romance-novelish for my tastes (“Our mouths clashed brutally," etc.). There was also a lot of repetition in the descriptive passages — church spires pierced the skyline more than once and I got slightly distracted by how many times the word “agony” was used. But I think this was a novel more about telling an engrossing story than about moving the reader with language (although it’s nice to have both when you can get it ).
Discussion questions below for those who are interested in perusing them!
Female friendship is a constant theme throughout The Alice Network. Charlie St. Clair and Eve Gardiner begin as antagonists, whereas Eve and Louise de Bettignies (Lili) are friends from the start. How does each friendship grow and change over the course of events?
The young Eve introduced in 1915 is very different from the older Eve seen through Charlie’s eyes in 1947. How and when did you see the young Eve begin to change into her older self? What was the catalyst of those changes?
Lili tells Eve, “To tell the truth, much of this special work we do is quite boring.” Did the realities of spy work surprise you, compared to the more glamorous version presented by Hollywood? How do you think you would have fared working for the historical Alice Network?
René Bordelon is denigrated by his peers as a war profiteer and an informer. He sees himself as a practical businessman, pointing out that he is not to blame for making money off the invaders, or for tragedies like Oradour-sur- Glane that happened on German orders. Did you see him as a villain or an opportunist? Do you think he earned his final fate?
Eve loves Captain Cameron and hates René Bordelon — but her relationship with René is longer, darker and more complex. How is her hatred for him complicated by intimacy? How does his realization of Eve’s true identity change him? How do you think they continued to think and feel about each other during their 30 years’ separation, and how did that affect their eventual climax?
Finn Kilgore and Captain Cameron are parallels for each other: both Scotsmen and ex-soldiers with war wounds and prison terms in their pasts, acting as support systems for the women they love who go into danger. How are the two men different as well as alike? How does Finn succeed where Cameron fails?
The disappearance of Charlie’s cousin Rose Fournier provides the story’s driving search. Did her eventual fate surprise you? Had you ever heard of Oradour-sur-Glane? How did Rose’s fate change the goal of the search?
Everyone in THE ALICE NETWORK suffers some form of emotional damage from war: Charlie’s depression after losing her marine brother to suicide, Eve’s torture-induced nightmares, Finn’s concentration-camp memories and resulting anger issues, Cameron’s guilt over losing his recruits. How do they each cope with their war wounds? How do they help each other heal? How is PTSD handled in Eve’s day as compared to Charlie’s day — and as compared to now?
Charlie dreads the stigma of being a “bad girl” pregnant out of wedlock, and Eve fears shame and dismissal as a horizontale if it is learned she slept with a source for information. Discuss the sexual double standards each woman faced. How have our sexual standards for women changed since 1915 and 1947?
Charlie decides to keep her baby, and Eve decides to have an abortion. Why did each woman make the choice she did?
Charlie argues that René should be brought to legal justice, and Eve argues for vigilante justice. Who do you think is right? How did it affect the ending? How do you think the outcome will bind Eve and Charlie and Finn in the future, since they cannot share their adventure with anyone else?
“There are two kinds of flowers when it comes to women. The kind that sit safe in a beautiful vase, or the kind that survive in any conditions…even in evil.” The theme of the fleurs du mal carries from Lili to Eve. How does Eve pass it on to Charlie? When do you see Charlie becoming a fleur du mal in her own right? How has knowing Eve changed Charlie’s life, and vice versa? The Alice Network by Kate Quinn | Book Club Discussion Questions | ReadingGroupGuides.com
I thought the ending with Charlie and Finn was too facile, but I enjoyed the look into an aspect of history that was unfamiliar to me. I read the first half via audio book and the second half as book-book, and the narrator was excellent. The stutter was done well, and I learned that the author’s husband has a stutter and encouraged her to include that and turn the disability into a strength for the character.
My knowledge of French geography is best described as vague, so I was happy to find this map online.
I found the book fascinating and horrifying at all the cruelty and ptsd everyone endured from the war and the baggage everyone was saddled with. It was a bright spot the Charlie and Finn were able to apparently move forward with a nice life together. It was also nice that Eve was able to enjoy hunting and traveling. Sad she was still such a heavy drinker but had switched to wine.
It’s been over a week since I finished the book so I don’t have detailed memories. I do know I could barely put it down once I started - really wanted to know what happened to the characters. I’ve read so much Holocaust related fiction over my life that I prefer not to be immersed in it anymore but I guess it was inevitable considering the time frames and situations.
One thing that struck me is that in the earlier parts of the book, Eve and Charlie’s stories seemed independent, like separate stories unfolding. Then as the book progressed, they became more and more intertwined. Sometimes it became too blunt - Charlie’s chapter ends by saying, “Then Eve told us what happened next.” Following chapter: Eve tells us what happened next.
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