Same. Something like the Bennington error shouldn’t really bother me – such a small thing – but why didn’t she just use Cornell? Two seconds on the internet tells me it’s been co-ed since 1870.
I also wonder about the editor in these situations. Since historical fiction is already blending truth with fantasy, the more accurate the novel can be with the historical details, the better (at least in my opinion).
I just finished the book this afternoon – audio version. I was astonished that the version I had (checked out of the library via Libby) seemed to lack the author’s note that some of you have mentioned. I really wanted more info about what was real and what was made up. How could that have been left out? Could I have missed it?-- I don’t see how, as I listened to the very end (have already returned my copy, so I can’t go double check, unfortunately).
ANYHOW, thank goodness for your links here – I’ve been able to read about Louise de Bettignies and the real Alice Network, which was the main thing I appreciated about the book. I have such admiration for those intrepid women and had not heard of them before.
I thought the author did a better job with the Eve sections than the Charlie sections, which read too much like a romance novel for my taste. Charlie getting together with Finn seemed inevitable, if implausible, from the start. I did appreciate her personal growth and especially her role in finding out that Eve never did spill her secrets to horrible Rene.
Rene was so one-dimensionally pure evil. I didn’t want to read more about him, for sure, but at the same time I wanted to know what turns a person into such a monster. Money and hubris, I suppose.
Something nobody has mentioned yet, I think: if Charlie was a math major at a first-rate college, why did she seem to have only gone as far as algebra? Those silly equations – eye roll!
The math whiz part wasn’t convincing. I presume the point was to make Charlie unique for her time, a rebel of sorts – but I needed more than her ability to calculate a tip. If she had been just a few years older, her background could have been part of the war effort: “She’s making history / working for victory.” The Women Mathematicians Who Joined the War Effort ‹ Literary Hub
If you liked The Alice Network, then you’ll like…
This blogger made a nice list:
(Didn’t we briefly consider The Secrets We Kept?)
Several years back, I learned that my mother’s older sister had been a math major and had an unknown job with the military during WWII. Unfortunately no one knows anything more. But I like to think she worked on codes.
Definitely toes the not-like-other-girls trope. Once Charlie’s math whiz abilities play no significant part it the story I called it for what it was: Not-Like-Other-Girls. Poor Charlie needs something to offset being unmarried-pregnant-unsure of the father. Okay then - math whiz; show her opposition to her mother’s need for Charlie to fall in line with fashion, marriage … and you meet Charlie … misunderstood/not like other girls.
Rene considered himself a clever opportunist – and at the outset, maybe that’s all he was. “I am a civilized man, Mademoiselle Le Francois, and the officers who eat under my roof are expected to behave like civilized men” (p. 151).
But I think spending so much time in the company of evil rubs off. He is in no way civilized by the end.
As far as evil monsters go, I wondered more about the soldiers at Oradour-sur-Glane. What is it that causes mass evil? There were approximately 150 soldiers responsible for murdering those innocent townspeople. You know that 150 evil men didn’t get assigned to the same regiment. They became that way, became capable of doing horrible things. It’s like a spell of some sort, a temporary madness – possessed by the devil, if you believe in that sort of thing. How could they live with themselves afterward?
I hadn’t heard of Oradour-sur-Glane, but incidents that mimic it have been used in film (“The Patriot”) and TV (“Godless”). It also made me think of (the real) Trachimbrod in Everything is Illuminated.
I had never heard of Oradour-sur-Glane, either.
But Americans did much the same thing in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in 1968. Very few men disobeyed the orders to round up and fire on unarmed civilians, and destroy and burn their village. Although others were charged, only Lt. Calley was convicted, and he only served 3 years on house arrest.
And now that I think of it - she did name her older daughter Alice! Maybe? But American, not British, so nah…
Given your Aunt’s history, you might enjoy The Rose Code (also by Kate Quinn). It tells the story of Bletchley Park from the point of view or three women, including one who is a cryptanalyst. Also historical fiction, so based on real life and some historical figures.
I read and enjoyed Quinn’s The Rose Code. I can give it a solid thumbs up.
I have put the book on hold. I’m also going to ask my brother (who enjoys family genealogy) if he ever learned more. No use asking the two remaining cousins - they were basically incommunicado on my nephew’s wedding invites.
Have you read her book The Diamond Eye? It’s based on the life story of an extremely successful Russian female sniper during WWII. I thought it was very interesting. Also The Huntress, which weaves three story lines together and which was somewhat disjointed, but I thought the section on a woman who was one of the feared Russian “Night Witch” bomber pilots was fascinating.
Another unbelievable event that happened in the book is when Finn beat the restaurant manager. It sounded like he broke his nose and really pounded him. For someone who had already been arrested for assault, plus the seriousness of the beating, l think there would have been police involved and repercussions for Finn. I believe he did go back and apologize later, but how could that be enough?
I’ve only read Quinn’s The Rose Code and now The Alice Network. I started The Diamond Eye but never went back to it. I had decided to request the audio version but then didn’t. Totally unlike me not to finish a book I’ve started. It just hadn’t grabbed me in the little bit I had read though I hadn’t gotten far enough into the book to form an opinion.
The perpetrators of the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane were not really brought to justice either. Only 19 men were convicted and 17 of those were released from prison after a few years.
Per Wikipedia, “General Heinz Lammerding of the Das Reich division, who had given the orders for retaliation against the Resistance, died in 1971, following a successful entrepreneurial career.” Apparently, he could not be extradited to France because of restrictions in the Bonn Constitution, so he got off scot-free. “His funeral in 1971 turned into a reunion of over 200 former SS personnel.” How nice. 
He beat the proprietor and broke the nose of the waiter! I think his apology would have been met with a police call and an arrest. Apparently, in the end, love conquers all, even severe PTSD.
What did you all think of how Eve dealt with her post-war / post-René trauma?
Shooting René had taught Eve just how much she liked to stalk, hunt, and kill dangerous things. She didn’t care for targeting shy gazelles or graceful giraffes, but the huge wild boars of Poland or the pride of man-eating lions stalking a village in east Africa had proved fair targets for the pair of Lugers sitting oiled and immaculate in the satchel under her chair.
I don’t know much about guns, but the internet does! – and a Luger isn’t a great choice for lion hunting. She should probably have invested in a rifle. 
I thought Charlie’s mathematical skills made her the kind of woman recruited to do the ciphering , decoding, and translating during the wars. I thought Quinn purposely portrayed her in similar to Eve.
Hard to say. She wasn’t of age during the war but the math skills portrayed don’t really equate to an ability to cipher or decode. She spoke some French but I don’t recall her proficiency. Anyway, she would have needed to speak and understand German to be of use translating.
Eve, on the other hand, spoke French and German fluently which is what caught the attention of Cameron.
Funny that Charlie and Eve bonded because of Rene.
The woman who stood out, of course, was Lili (Louise), who is all that and more.
I’m back and ready to comment.
I liked the book only as far as its true history was concerned. I thought the fiction was too saccharine and, well, twee – a word I’ve never used before. Just too facile and too cute. Finn and Charlie? Never in real life. Charlie obsessed with finding Rose? Never in real life. And so on and so forth.
BUT, better books about women spies are plentiful – a few have been mentioned already. In addition, consider these:
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell – nonfiction and, IMO, the best of the bunch. Talks about the spy career of Virginia Hall, who successfully outsmarted the Nazis while working in the French Resistance. She was an amputee, too!, but successfully outwitted the Nazis for years.
The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict – about Heddy Lamarr, if you can believe it! She was a spy who married an Austrian arms dealer and spilled his secrets to the Allies. She was also a scientist.
Code Name Blue Wren by Jim Popkin, also nonfiction, is about an American woman who spied for the Cubans. She obtained a very high level in the Defense Intelligence Agency and did irreparable harm to the US.
The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah is fiction, also about the French Resistance.
I could go on, but my point is that there are many books out there about women spies that, IMO, are better than The Alice Network. Nevertheless, I’m not sorry I read it; I actually learned a lot from it.