55 pages • 1 hour read
Kate QuinnThe Briar Club
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Three Years Earlier. October 1951.” - Part 4: “Two and a Half Years Earlier. February 1952.”
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary: “Reka”
The chapter includes recipes for Arlene’s Candle Salad and Reka’s Haluski.
Reka is a bitter 71-year-old Hungarian refugee who works with Grace at the Smoot Library, shelving books. Unbeknownst to the other boarders, she is also a talented avant-garde artist who taught in Berlin before World War II. Reka sadly thinks her glory days are past her: “She wasn’t the woman she’d once been, downing a bottle of absinthe and a bottle of vodka at a cabaret and waking up the following morning bright-eyed and ready to rip apart thirty-plus Dadaist student still lifes” (121).
Once a month, when she has the money to spare, Reka takes a three-hour train ride to New York and back again to attend an art gallery showing. She knows many gallery owners and is aware of the latest trends in the art world. This is her only remaining pleasure in life. When she and her late husband were forced to flee Germany, they lost everything, and neither one could find jobs suited to their training in the land of opportunity. Otto had been a journalist who could only find work as a janitor. Reka shelved library books instead of teaching or creating art. She only grudgingly attends Grace’s Thursday night gatherings because it offers Reka one good meal a week. Grace has affectionately nicknamed her Attila the Hungarian.
Grace gives nicknames to all the boarders. Arlene Hupp becomes the Huppmobile because Grace perceives her as soulless and focused only on efficiency. On one Thursday night, Arlene brings along her beau to the Briar Club supper. Harland Adams works for J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. The atmosphere in Washington is tense, with Hoover determined to root out LGBTQ+ individuals working in government and Senator Joe McCarthy equally determined to crush communism in the US. McCarthy’s investigations blacklist many innocent people who are unable to find work after being branded as communists. Arlene works for HUAC and enthusiastically embraces McCarthy’s ideology.
Once Arlene and Harland start talking about the Red Menace during the Thursday night meal, Reka feels compelled to contradict them. She says, “Live as long as I have and you’ll realize that whether the organization you put your faith in brandishes a Bible or a copy of Das Kapital, the haves in that organization are rarely interested in sharing with the have-nots” (127). Her comments don’t sit well with Arlene, who is even more upset when everyone makes fun of the banana concoction she prepared for dinner. It’s called Candle Salad, but it looks like a penis standing upright on a plate, causing the Briar Club to erupt into peals of laughter. Arlene leaves, humiliated.
A few days after this episode, Reka is fired from her job. She learns that someone reported her as a communist sympathizer, and Grace tells her it was Arlene. With no savings, Reka is desperate to find a way to pay her rent. Years earlier, she and Otto smuggled three valuable Gustav Klimt sketches out of Germany. Because Hitler ordered all of Klimt’s work to be burned, these artworks are now priceless. However, the man who sponsored their entry into the US forced Reka and Otto to turn over all their valuables to him. This is a senator from Virginia named Sutherland.
Reka marches angrily to his son’s home in Georgetown. Barrett Sutherland will soon follow in his father’s footsteps by running for Congress. On this particular night, both the senator and his son are away. Instead, Barrett’s wife confronts Reka. The woman is strikingly attractive and speaks with a British accent. Reka says, “Does Senator Sutherland boast about how many he helped save from Germany? […] Does he tell you he stripped them of anything they had? Anything of value, that is. He let us keep the scraps” (136). Mrs. Sutherland doesn’t betray any emotion but offers to call Reka a cab when she appears faint after her outburst. She also rides back with the old woman, encountering Fliss at Prospect Park. Mrs. Sutherland attends the same church as Fliss, and the latter promises to get Reka home. Mrs. Sutherland also slips Reka $50.
Later, Reka encounters Grace in the stairwell. She has begun painting vines and flowers on the walls to brighten the space. Reka is still fuming about her lost job and stolen sketches. When Grace observes this, she tells her to let it go, believing it will be like poison, eating her up otherwise.
On Christmas Eve, Reka gets the idea to break into the Sutherland house. She knows that the family will be attending a church service that evening. Reka goes to the back door and searches for a key under the mat, but Mrs. Sutherland opens the door. She has been drinking, and the bruises on her face suggest that her husband has beaten her. She says, “My little boy thinks I fell down the stairs this afternoon. Mummy’s so clumsy. It’s part of the family lore by now” (148).
Sydney Sutherland remembers Reka’s accusation about the stolen artwork and invites her into the home. The Klimt sketches are hanging in her bedroom, and Mrs. Sutherland tells Reka to take them. Sydney will explain their absence as a theft, and insurance will cover the loss. Reka leaves with the sketches and considers her options. She will get a safety deposit box in New York and start approaching museums to buy the pieces from her. Even though she is still bitter that Otto is dead, Grace reminds Reka that happiness is a choice. Shortly afterward, Reka buys some art supplies and begins painting again.
Part 3, Interstitial 3 Summary: “Thanksgiving 1954, Washington, D.C.”
Returning to 1954, the house watches as the head detective calls in an entire team. The team speculates that there may be two murderers since the method of attack is so different between the first and second victims. The first victim was slashed impulsively with a garden sickle. The second victim was bludgeoned in a more calculated manner.
Part 4, Chapter 4 Summary: “Fliss”
The chapter includes recipes for Claude’s Gumbo and Fliss’s Strawberry Fool.
It is now February 1952, and Fliss is trying to care for her baby daughter alone. With no one to help her, she is frequently exhausted and reproaches herself for being a bad mother. Although she was overjoyed when Angela was born, those feelings have evaporated: “The happiness. She could remember it; she just couldn’t feel it now. All she could feel, gazing at her adorable daughter, was a desperate gray fog of nothing” (170).
Fliss was once a nurse, and her uncle, who runs a women’s clinic in Massachusetts, encourages her to return to work, but she has no time. She becomes acquainted with Sydney Sutherland at church simply because both have English accents. Each woman feels isolated, and the accent is enough to start a friendship. Fliss has been supplying spermicidal cream to Sydney, who doesn’t want any more children. Her brutal husband is pressuring her for more offspring, but Fliss suggests that Sydney go to her uncle, Dr. John Rock, who is conducting a fertility study. He is testing a prototype birth control pill, but contraception is still highly controversial. Barrett Sutherland controls his wife’s every move, but he agrees to let Sydney see the doctor, believing that this will help her get pregnant again. When Fliss’s husband Dan writes to suggest that he’s looking forward to another child, she wants to tell him how exhausted she is and terrified of bringing another child into a world where atomic bombs are a reality, and Senator McCarthy is persecuting everyone.
Back at the Briarwood, Grace has christened Fliss “Bubble and Squeak.” This is a British dish that the residents don’t like very much. Grace is now dating a Black musician named Claude Cormier, who works at the Amber Club. One Thursday, he cooks Louisiana gumbo for the Briar Club. Even though Claude prepared the meal, Arlene objects to dining with a Black person. Grace suggests that she can eat alone downstairs.
A few days later, Grace notices how tired Fliss looks and suggests that she take a break and allow one of the other residents to mind Angela for the evening. Even though Fliss reproaches herself as a bad mother, Grace says, “You’re doing fine. I don’t know what lofty ideal of motherhood you were sold, but let me tell you: there isn’t a mother born who doesn’t want to drop her two-year-old out a window from time to time” (190). Fliss breaks down in tears of relief at the thought of the Briar Club support net surrounding her. Grace arranges for Fliss to join her and Claude for a night of drinks and dancing at the racially integrated Chickland Club. A police raid interrupts their evening, and the three of them barely escape. Someone writes the word “communist” on the club’s windows. Shaken, Claude makes his way home alone.
Back at Briarwood House, Fliss receives a phone call from her husband, Dan, in Korea. He reassures her that they don’t need to have any more children if Fliss doesn’t want them. Relieved and emboldened by her husband’s understanding, Fliss decides to help Sydney. She arranges to escort her to Massachusetts to her uncle’s clinic to participate in the birth control study. Fliss resolves to return to her nursing career soon to help her uncle with his work.
Part 4, Interstitial 4 Summary: “Thanksgiving 1954, Washington, D.C.”
On Thanksgiving 1954, the house nervously listens as Mrs. Nilsson loudly declares her intention to sell the building to a furniture store. Briarwood feels it would no longer be a home, and the prospect horrifies it. Meanwhile, one of the detectives finds the second murder weapon under a couch. It turns out to be a baseball bat, and the police demand to know the name of the owner.
Parts 3-4 Analysis
The book’s second segment follows the lives of the cranky Hungarian boarder named Reka and the young British wife and mother named Fliss. Significantly, both are foreigners trying to adjust to life in the US. Their challenges foreground the themes of Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism and The Struggle for Freedom. Each one must find a way to blend into the culture, but McCarthy’s war on un-American behavior means that people are subjected to increased scrutiny and paranoia. Unlike Fliss and her attempts to be always pleasing, Reka doesn’t care. She’s in her seventies and is world-weary. Her own identity is bound up in her past as an avant-garde artist during the years of the Weimar Republic in Berlin. She spends her days brooding about everything she lost when Hitler came to power. Reka is wise enough to recognize the similarities between Hitler and McCarthy and is old enough to no longer be cowed by authority. Her resilience positions her as a counterpoint to the more conformist characters in the novel, as she is a more defiant, disillusioned character. However, this attitude automatically sets her at odds with the novel’s two greatest proponents of all-American values and the suppression of dissidents: Arlene and Harland.
Arlene’s affiliation with HUAC and Harland’s role as an FBI agent make them both hypersensitive to any behavior they perceive as threatening to the American way of life. Their positions highlight the pervasive climate of fear and suspicion that characterized the period, creating broader societal tensions, including within Briarwood House. As a foreigner, Reka is a natural target for their suspicions. The confrontation they have during a Briar Club supper highlights the problem with political ideology as a yardstick measuring virtue and vice. While the Briar Club will ultimately become the driving force for the theme of Finding Support and Overcoming Differences in a Circle of Friends, tensions persist at this point in the narrative. Once Harland starts offering his opinion on the threat of communism, Reka thinks, “The trouble with men like Harland Adams was that they hadn’t been interrupted enough whenever they started holding forth about the country, the law, the children” (126). Reka’s blunt comment emphasizes the dangers of unchecked authority.
Having seen firsthand the kind of damage an oppressive leader could do when Hitler came to power, Reka can easily spot the same pattern emerging in her adopted country. Because of her experiences, Reka can identify the cyclical nature and oppression and remains a different kind of vigilance than those who align themselves with McCarthyism. The shouting match that erupts between Reka and Harland amuses Grace, and she labels the old woman a firebrand. She adds, “Firebrands ask questions, and a nation where you can’t ask questions is one that is going downhill” (126-27). This statement emphasizes the role of authoritarianism, positioning inquiry and dissent as essential components of a healthy, free society. Unfortunately, Reka’s vocal opposition to McCarthyism and her assertion of personal freedom costs her. Arlene tells Reka’s boss that she is a communist sympathizer, and the old woman loses her library job. This underscores the challenges in Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism.
When the story switches to Fliss’s narrative, the novel examines this theme and The Struggle for Freedom from a different angle. The narrative moves from the realm of political doctrine to personal independence. Fliss still faces the same pressure to keep up appearances as everyone else in McCarthy’s US, further establishing the symbolic role McCarthyism plays in the narrative. Her challenges also reflect the broader societal pressures women experienced during this era, highlighting the intersection of gender and political ideology. Fliss wants to project the image of the perfect mother, but the daily grind of caring for an infant wears her down. Further, she is horrified at the thought of having another child when she can barely cope with the first one. Not wanting to have additional children was seen as highly un-American during the baby boom era, so Fliss must keep her desires for increased bodily autonomy to herself.
Her previous role as a nurse and her association with a progressive doctor allowed Fliss to typify the first wave of women for whom contraception was a viable option. However, the need to put up a good front requires these activities to be conducted in secret. The doctor in question must disguise his contraceptive pill clinical trials as a fertility study. Fliss’s struggle to model appropriate maternal behavior is echoed in Sydney Sutherland. She must get her spermicide cream secretly from Fliss. The necessary secrecy shows the stigma surrounding female autonomy, particularly concerning reproductive rights during the time. Sydney herself also needs to assume a false identity to appear superficially acceptable. Like Fliss, she is foreign-born, but her marriage into a senator’s family makes her behavior even more subject to scrutiny. She must hide the bruises her abusive husband inflicted and pretend that she is going for fertility treatments rather than contraception. This further develops the symbol of abusive authorities and how it negatively affects women livelihood.
Aside from Fliss’s and Sydney’s struggles to appear maternal, a third character in this segment struggles with Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism and The Struggle for Freedom. Musician Claude Cormier is Black, but he is dating Grace, who is white. Even though he cooks for the Briar Club, Arlene is reluctant to share a meal with a Black man. Claude’s experience highlights the racial dynamics of the time, revealing how systemic racism complicates one’s struggle for personal freedom and acceptance. Later, Claude escorts Grace and Fliss to an integrated club and gets caught in a police raid. Afterward, he is so shaken by the violent reaction that integration provokes that he slips back into the shadows and refuses to date Grace again. He can only preserve his American identity and be perceived as a nonthreatening Black man if he associates exclusively with his own race. This cements the role of systemic racism at the time, emphasizing that the dominant society does not see his freedom as equal to that of white people.
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