Reviewer: Samantha
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Summary:
Rose Baker seals men’s fates. With a few strokes of the keys that sit before her, she can send a person away for life in prison. A typist in a New York City Police Department precinct, Rose is like a high priestess. Confessions are her job. It is 1923, and while she may hear every detail about shootings, knifings, and murders, as soon as she leaves the interrogation room she is once again the weaker sex, best suited for filing and making coffee.
This is a new era for women, and New York is a confusing place for Rose. Gone are the Victorian standards of what is acceptable. All around her women bob their hair, they smoke, they go to speakeasies. Yet prudish Rose is stuck in the fading light of yesteryear, searching for the nurturing companionship that eluded her childhood. When glamorous Odalie, a new girl, joins the typing pool, despite her best intentions Rose falls under Odalie’s spell. As the two women navigate between the sparkling underworld of speakeasies by night and their work at the station by day, Rose is drawn fully into Odalie’s high-stakes world. And soon her fascination with Odalie turns into an obsession from which she may never recover.
Review:
I thought I would like this book for several reasons. One, I love the 1920’s era. I’m always on board to read a book that falls in that time period. Second, court reporting was a very popular major at my small college, and I have several friends who work as court reporters today. I thought this would be a fun way to see how “typists” started out and hopefully recommend the book to my friends. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out to be what I expected. It took a long time for me to get into the story and for any real action to start happening, and while I waited, the writing became quite tedious. There were long paragraphs that didn’t really move the story forward and seemed inconsequential to the story. My interest was pretty lost by the time the “twist” was being put into the works, and I had started speed reading at that point, so I wasn’t able to fully immerse myself in how the ending was going to work out. I did enjoy the setting – the 1920’s, the speakeasies, learning about how women were starting to find new roles in the workplace – but the gist of the story was mostly confusing and exhausting to get through.
I’d seen mixed reviews about this book, but I took a chance on it from my library. I don’t read many period pieces, but I really enjoyed this book. The end was confusing, and I re-read the epilogue about three times before I made up my mind as to exactly what happened. I’ve spoken with several other people who’ve read it and found it interesting that we all took different things away from the book, and those things shaped our ideas of the ending and what happened to Rose and Odalie in the end.
I’ve actually read a lot of positive reviews and I know it’s being made into a movie by Keira Knightley, which she will star in.