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A review by candacesovan
The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon
3.0
I got this book as a first-read, and I guess I expected a lame book in desperate need of publicity. Not so! "The Crimson Rooms" is extremely well-written and grabbed me from page one. In fact, I stayed up all last night, trying to finish it.
Our heroine is a female junior law clerk in 1924 London, one of the first few women admitted to the bar. Her entire family is a frozen tableau of grief for her younger brother, Jamie, killed in WWI, and her father, who, heart-broken, drank himself to death. She lives in a dark cloud surrounded by her mother, grandmother, aunt, and two ancient female servants, who are all scraping by on the tiny bit of money left to her once-more-successful family. Her brother's room is still as he left it, and Evelyn Gifford's ground-breaking status as a female lawyer is not lauded within her very traditional family. Still single as she approaches 30, she is seen as an utter failure in female terms.
Thundering into her life comes a young Canadian woman, Meredith, who arrives in the middle of the night with a six-year-old boy, Edmund, in tow. Meredith claims that the boy was fathered by Jamie in a hospital behind the lines in France. Evelyn is mistrustful of the woman, and her family is appalled by her arrival.
Meanwhile, Evelyn becomes involved in two cases, one involving a woman who gave up her children to a charity home and now cannot get them back, and the other a war veteran who is accused of having shot his beautiful bride of only three weeks.
And much to her surprise, a handsome young lawyer, Nicolas Thorne, who is involved in the murder case comes into her life. Although he is betrothed to another woman, the two of them spark immediately.
Evelyn wrestles with several mysteries: Can she help the mother of three children get them back before they are sent off to Canada or Australia? Did the bereaved husband really murder his bride? Is Thorne really in love with her? And what's the deal with Meredith?
*****SPOILER ALERT — READ NO FURTHER TO AVOID PLOT DETAILS*****
The character of Meredith never quite comes together for me. I guess she is supposed to represent some of the brokenness of all who participated in the horror of WWI, but she seemed very inconsistent to me. She was also the source of a heckuva lot of coincidences that weren't explained convincingly by the plot. She felt like a plot device more than a person to me.
I also didn't understand Evelyn's complete rejection of Thorne at the end of the book. It did turn out that he had some involvement in the cover-up of a dreadful crime, but his involvement was largely unwitting. I half expected the sudden huge twist of a Sarah Waters novel, where love is revealed to be nothing more than intrigue and betrayal, but that was not the case here. So, why the need to so utterly reject him?
She was able to forgive her mother's betrayal (withholding Jamie's last letter), but not Nicolas, who never really did betray her. I just don't get it.
And why, at the end, would she move in with Meredith, who seemed to me to be hellbent on her own slow, eventual dissolution?
I guess the author wanted to avoid the usual "happily ever after" of most heterosexual romances, but she didn't do it in a way that felt believable or uplifting. It felt like Evelyn was choosing to define herself as Edmund's spinster auntie, and that didn't really make sense to me.
On the other hand, the writing was strong, and the plot really involved me.
~~~
Note: The version of the book sent to me was supposedly an "uncorrected proof," and yet I found only a very few typos and perhaps one error. (Don't the well-to-do English go to "public schools" rather than "private" ones?) That impressed me because so many modern books come to us riddled with typos and mistakes. Obviously, some care went into its preparation. I am also supposed to note that I received this book via one of Goodread's First Reads, which offers us the chance to enter to win various books.
Our heroine is a female junior law clerk in 1924 London, one of the first few women admitted to the bar. Her entire family is a frozen tableau of grief for her younger brother, Jamie, killed in WWI, and her father, who, heart-broken, drank himself to death. She lives in a dark cloud surrounded by her mother, grandmother, aunt, and two ancient female servants, who are all scraping by on the tiny bit of money left to her once-more-successful family. Her brother's room is still as he left it, and Evelyn Gifford's ground-breaking status as a female lawyer is not lauded within her very traditional family. Still single as she approaches 30, she is seen as an utter failure in female terms.
Thundering into her life comes a young Canadian woman, Meredith, who arrives in the middle of the night with a six-year-old boy, Edmund, in tow. Meredith claims that the boy was fathered by Jamie in a hospital behind the lines in France. Evelyn is mistrustful of the woman, and her family is appalled by her arrival.
Meanwhile, Evelyn becomes involved in two cases, one involving a woman who gave up her children to a charity home and now cannot get them back, and the other a war veteran who is accused of having shot his beautiful bride of only three weeks.
And much to her surprise, a handsome young lawyer, Nicolas Thorne, who is involved in the murder case comes into her life. Although he is betrothed to another woman, the two of them spark immediately.
Evelyn wrestles with several mysteries: Can she help the mother of three children get them back before they are sent off to Canada or Australia? Did the bereaved husband really murder his bride? Is Thorne really in love with her? And what's the deal with Meredith?
*****SPOILER ALERT — READ NO FURTHER TO AVOID PLOT DETAILS*****
The character of Meredith never quite comes together for me. I guess she is supposed to represent some of the brokenness of all who participated in the horror of WWI, but she seemed very inconsistent to me. She was also the source of a heckuva lot of coincidences that weren't explained convincingly by the plot. She felt like a plot device more than a person to me.
I also didn't understand Evelyn's complete rejection of Thorne at the end of the book. It did turn out that he had some involvement in the cover-up of a dreadful crime, but his involvement was largely unwitting. I half expected the sudden huge twist of a Sarah Waters novel, where love is revealed to be nothing more than intrigue and betrayal, but that was not the case here. So, why the need to so utterly reject him?
She was able to forgive her mother's betrayal (withholding Jamie's last letter), but not Nicolas, who never really did betray her. I just don't get it.
And why, at the end, would she move in with Meredith, who seemed to me to be hellbent on her own slow, eventual dissolution?
I guess the author wanted to avoid the usual "happily ever after" of most heterosexual romances, but she didn't do it in a way that felt believable or uplifting. It felt like Evelyn was choosing to define herself as Edmund's spinster auntie, and that didn't really make sense to me.
On the other hand, the writing was strong, and the plot really involved me.
~~~
Note: The version of the book sent to me was supposedly an "uncorrected proof," and yet I found only a very few typos and perhaps one error. (Don't the well-to-do English go to "public schools" rather than "private" ones?) That impressed me because so many modern books come to us riddled with typos and mistakes. Obviously, some care went into its preparation. I am also supposed to note that I received this book via one of Goodread's First Reads, which offers us the chance to enter to win various books.