The Briar Club

Nora is an attractive blond businesswoman who comes from an Irish American police family. She spends much of her time trying to distance herself from her family and their attempts to draw her back into their constricting belief system. Nora’s brother steals money from her. Her sister-in-law wants to use her as an unpaid babysitter, and her mother pressures her to live at home until she marries. Nora is ambitious, independent, and wants to build a career for herself at the National Archives.

Despite her desire to distance herself from her roots, Nora’s romantic relationships pull her back into danger. Her previous boyfriend was a corrupt cop who abused her physically. No sooner does she rid herself of him before she becomes romantically involved with Xavier Byrne, whose family is tied to the Irish mob in Washington. Nora believes in law and order, but her encounters with corrupt cops and virtuous gangsters test her values. Nora eventually comes to realize that virtue and vice are not black-and-white issues. By the end of the novel, she is willing to accept some shades of grey in her relationships, demonstrating the dynamic nature of her character.

Reka is the only elderly tenant at Briarwood House, and she walks with a cane principally because she likes to swat people in her way. At 71, she is a Hungarian refugee who escaped Nazi Germany with her husband. Unfortunately, the Mullers find the US is not the paradise they imagined. Neither spouse can find employment in their lines of work, and they end up losing all their valuables, which a corrupt senator who sponsored their entry to the country stole. While Reka is antagonistic to the other tenants, she is not the novel’s antagonist and is a round character. Rather, she is a woman embittered by her past losses. Grieving the death of her husband and her stolen Klimt sketches, she is unable to live fully in the present.

Her monthly trips to New York art galleries remind her of her days as an artist and art professor in Berlin, yet Reka doesn’t pick up a paintbrush. She is fixated on her lost art and doesn’t try creating any new art. Grace gently hints that such anger may consume her if she doesn’t let it go. Fortunately, when Reka restores her stolen sketches, her life takes a more constructive turn. She begins painting again and starts a new phase of her art career, returning to the things that brought her immense pleasure when she lived in Hungary. Although she dies of a heart attack by the end of the novel, one of her paintings of the Briar Club now hangs in Briarwood House’s sitting room.

Fliss is a young wife who is struggling to take care of her baby girl while her doctor husband is stationed in Korea. She is English and desperate to adapt to life in the US, sometimes overcompensating in the process. She is always perky and chipper to counteract the assumption that English people are too reserved. Because Fliss has no family support group, the caring for her daughter falls on her shoulders alone. Although she is frequently exhausted, she reproaches herself for being a bad mother if she relaxes her vigilance for even a second.

Fliss feels the pressures of motherhood keenly, and when her husband suggests that they have more children right away, she is appalled. As a former nurse, she is aware of contraceptive measures and wants to work with her uncle, who runs a women’s clinic. Because of the social messaging Fliss has received, however, she feels even more guilty about wanting a break from her daughter and limiting her fertility. Once again, Grace intervenes, suggesting that Fliss needs to treat herself more gently. The Briar Club also steps in to provide the support net that Fliss so urgently needs. By the end of the novel, she is reunited with her husband and happily goes back to work at her uncle’s clinic, helping other women decide when and how many children they will have. Through this work, Fliss finds fulfillment as a working mother in her desired field.

Bea is a tall, dark-haired young woman who loves baseball. She played professionally for eight years during the heyday of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. A knee injury forces her out of the sport, leaving Bea stuck in a job as a junior high school physical education teacher. Further, women’s baseball is being phased out as men return from war, and male baseball teams are back in the spotlight. Bea has a forceful, direct personality and feels her talents are being wasted. Her situation grows more complicated when she begins dating an FBI agent who wants to marry her, something she doesn’t want at this point. Although Fliss has aspirations outside of motherhood and fulfills them by the end of the novel, Bea serves as a foil to Fliss for much of the novel, as she refuses to become a wife and shirks her desires.

Bea finds the prospect of being a homemaker just as unfulfilling as teaching gym until Grace suggests that she should seek out jobs related to baseball even if she can’t play anymore. Bea takes this suggestion and lands a job as a talent scout for the Washington Senators. Even though she isn’t ready for marriage, Bea continues to date her boyfriend as she travels the country looking for talented young baseball players. By rejecting marriage at this point in her life—and the confines of homemaking that accompany it—Bea prioritizes her autonomy and professional fulfillment.

Claire is plump and brassy compared to the quieter young ladies of the Briar Club. While she isn’t the novel’s antagonist, she is a round character who has antagonistic tendencies toward the more subdued residents.

Claire feels no loyalty toward the group and isn’t above stealing small objects from her fellow tenants and selling them later. Claire’s past includes stints as a sex worker and pin-up model. Despite her youth, she has developed a pragmatic attitude in life. This feeling stems from the hard experiences of her childhood. The descendent of Polish immigrants, Claire became an orphan at age 16 after the Great Depression drained her family’s life savings. Her mother died by suicide, and her father died soon after. After that point, she was willing to do anything to survive. Her one goal in life is to save $8,000 to buy her own home.

Despite Claire’s sometimes harsh exterior, she has a soft heart and doesn’t believe in the McCarthy witch hunts. She works for Senator Margaret Chase Smith and agrees with her boss’s view that Americans ought to be free to disagree with one another. Claire’s hardened attitude erodes further when she begins an affair with a senator’s daughter-in-law, Sydney, and falls in love with her. To help Sydney escape an abusive marriage, Claire is willing to use her life savings to make a new life elsewhere for them. It soon becomes apparent that Claire’s cynicism is superficial. When it matters most, she defends both Sydney and Grace after Arlene tries to get the latter arrested. By the end of the story, Claire creates a home with Sydney in the Bahamas.

Arlene is a blond, bossy Texan who works for HUAC. She functions as the novel’s antagonist since she aligns herself politically with McCarthyism and believes that all communists are evil—a belief that remains static for the majority of the novel. Arlene is unlikeable due to her personality traits and actions. The other members of the Briar Club shun her whenever possible. Once Grace moves in, Arlene goes out of her way to make Grace like her. This ploy doesn’t work, and Arlene remains alienated throughout the story.

Her antagonism toward the rest of the women only increases when Bea starts dating Arlene’s former boyfriend, Harland. Since Arlene anticipates a proposal from Harland, Bea’s encroachment on her territory particularly embitters her. In the novel’s final chapters, Arlene tries to get Grace arrested as a communist, hoping this will bring her a promotion and recognition from important men in government. Her paranoia about the Red Menace leads her to club Barrett Sutherland to death. Ironically, Arlene finds herself depending on Grace to save her. The latter does so and eventually helps Arlene find an appropriate spouse. Despite the villainous nature Arlene plays for most of the novel, she receives a happy ending by its end.