I knew early on this was not going to be the book I expected and I mean that in a complimentary sense.
I thought this would be a cozy-esque female housewife in the 50s using her wiles to navigate Manhattan cocktail parties and deduce who may or may not be a Soviet sympathizer.
There’s nothing cozy about this, however. It’s a raw, intriguing look at the perils of motherhood for women in the 1950s, with a spy story tacked on in the background.
The espionage part is done well enough but it’s a stretch to call it suspenseful. Rina, the protagonist of the story, is recruited to reunite with an old flame and use her language skills to inform for the FBI. But of course, she has to content with a demanding husband and two little ones. Finding excuses to be free of domestic responsibility is tough for her so she has to get creative with varying degrees of success.
This is a messy book in the best way because Rina is a complicated person. She’s in transition of her life trying to figure out what she wants from it, while desiring to use her skills in the best way possible. She likes her husband and kids but she doesn’t particularly like being a wife and mother and the way Karin Tanabe teases this out felt very real, especially because I can somewhat (though, obviously, I have no idea what it means to be a woman, I am our kids primary caretaker).
The ending could have been better and I don’t buy the romance angle but there was enough here that really made me appreciate Tanabe as a writer. Her books are on my radar. Pass on this if you do want the cozy-esque spy story but if you want a real, honest tale about womanhood, motherhood, and trying to use your talent in less-than-ideal circumstances — plus some really fun 50s Manhattan locales — give this a shot.