The Alice Network

The Alice Network

By Kate Quinn

It's 1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe to have her "little problem" taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.

It's 1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she's recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she's trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the "Queen of Spies", who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy's nose.

Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn't heard in decades and launches them both on a mission to find the truth...no matter where it leads. 

 I was not expecting this to be so...visceral. I just finished reading Our Woman in Moscow, another one set slightly post-WWII, about lady spies, and that was basically a travelogue compared to The Alice Network. I also wasn't expecting the torture and murder and whatnot even from her earlier book, The Rose Code, which is also a fairly distant view of the wartime.  Not so here.  We know very early on that Eve's had all the bones in both her hands broken, but it's still a shock when you read it.  There's graphic depictions of, well, rape, although the participants might balk at calling it that. We're into a more grown-up version of Code Name: Verity.  We actually spend no time at all on WWII, just switching back and forth between Eve's time as a spy in WWI and Charlie's search in 1947 for her cousin.  And this is by far the weakest part of the book.  

Let me get this out (deep breath): somehow Charlie has an all encompassing need to find her cousin, whom she hasn't seen in six years, nor talked to in three years, and the report on missing persons winds up on Eve's desk. But in an unholy mess of coincidences, it's known that Rose worked at La Lethe, but somehow Eve never sees this, but yet not known that Rose lived in the village which was destroyed by German troops in revenge for suspected espionage.  AND all of this was caused by La Lethe's owner, Rene, whom is responsible for both Eve's hands and Rose's death. How convenient that Eve was the one working on Rose's report! How convenient that Eve never saw Rose's employer! How convenient that someone else knew Rose's employer! How convenient that this other person had all this information on Rose except her home address, which would have told them exactly what happened to her! How convenient that Charlie decides to go digging this all up and finds Eve at her home! How convenient that the one person Eve is willing to kill is the same person they're tracking for Charlie! 

 And I liked Charlie to begin with, but I found her less and less appealing as a character as things went on. She's like, oh well, who knows who the father of this child is, since I slept with like, seven different boys, and I'm nineteen, but I think I can raise this kid! After all, I've shown excellent judgment and discernment!  I'm just going to plan to open a cafe with my cousin, whom has disappeared!  And when all that fails, I'll just marry the guy who I met two months ago who has PTSD. Not to mention that anyone who disappeared in France in 1944 and has not turned up within a few years is DEFINITELY DEAD.  Charlie, you're an idiot.

Eve's story was very compelling though.  We spend a lot of time on her sexual relationship with Rene, which was super gross and I tried to skip past it as much as possible.  I wished we'd spent more time with Lili and the other one, but regardless, those sections do a good job of ramping up tension, fear, and keeping the book moving along.  Anytime we get back into 1947 though, we lose steam again.  They move around geographically quite a bit in 1947, but it's mostly just making time until they get to Limoges and find out what happened to Oradour-sur-Glane.

Meanwhile, we're approaching the climax of Eve's story, which (as you could have expected) results in her broken fingers plus prison, and then we take another left turn to menace present-day Rene, who, it appears, was smart enough to get through all of WWI by pandering to the Germans, could apparently sniff out lies better than the secret police, and managed to escape with his life despite the Germans losing the war, and then... despite the fact that he'd been keeping a spy under his nose and had to change his name to avoid revenge for his collaboration with the enemy, he decided to do it again in WWII, using the exact same restaurant name? Truly, a dizzying intellect.  I was NOT prepared for the shoot-out, although the idea that Eve then decides to go around hunting former nazis is enticing. 

29: A Different Book by an Author You Read in 2021 (The Rose Code)