206. The Alice Network
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Kate Quinn
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II
520 pages, published June 6, 2017
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
The Alice Network tells two parallel stories. The first takes place in 1947 and focuses on college girl and American Charlie St. Clair who is pregnant, unmarried, and at a crossroads in her life. She travels to England to enlist the help of the grizzled and standoffish former English spy Eve Gardiner in a desperate bid to find her cousin Rose who disappeared during World War II. Also along for the ride is Eve’s assistant Finn, a handsome, and magnetic Scottish ex-con who Charlie finds her falling for. The second story spotlights Eve’s time during World War I when she was part of the “Alice Network,” a group of female spies stationed primarily in France. We follow the trio’s journey as they uncover the truth about Rose and Eve’s past during both of the World Wars and come to terms with themselves and each other.
Quotes
“What did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done?”
‘To tell the truth, much of this special work we do is quite boring. I think that’s why women are good as it. Our lives are already boring. We jump an Uncle Edward’s offer because we can’t stand the thought of working in a file room anymore, or teaching a class full of runny-nosed children their letters. Then we discover this job is deadly dull as well, but at least there’s the enlivening thought that someone might put a Luger to the back of our necks. It’s still better than shooting ourselves, which we know we’re going to do if we have to type one more letter or pound one more Latin verb into a child’s ivory skull.”
“Hope was such a painful thing, far more painful than rage.”
“It is facile to condemn the French for giving in to the Nazis too easily when many French citizens would have still borne the horrendous scars of the first occupation, would have clearly remembered having to stand back while German sentries robbed them of everything but the nearly inedible ration bread because the only alternative was to be arrested, beaten, or shot. The French survived not one but two brutal occupations in a span of less than forty years, and deserve more credit for their flinty endurance than they receive.”
“You think there are no idiots in the intelligence business, that your superiors are all brilliant men who understand the game? […] This business is rife with idiots. They play with lives and they play badly, and when people like you die as a result, they shrug and as ‘Risks have to be taken in wartime.’ You’d really march yourself into a firing squad for that kind of fool?”
My Take
While The Alice Network is an enjoyable read in the spy/World War genre, I found The Nightingale to be a much better book. The characters fell a bit flat and the plot could have been more intriguing. Not a bad book by any means. There is just better material about World War I and II out there.
