“What did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done?”
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
The Alice Network is a classic World War II literary fiction novel, split into two perspectives with alternating chapters. We follow two women in dual timelines: Eve Gardner, who is recruited as a spy during WWI; and Charlie St. Clair, an American socialite searching for her cousin, who disappeared during WWII. Novels set during this time period oftentimes stun me with the raw and devastating stories that they tell, but unfortunately, The Alice Network failed to amaze me, and particular elements actually disturbed and disgusted me. I can’t wait to get into why.
In WWI, we follow Eve Gardner, whose story is the superior of the two. Eve wants to contribute to the war effort, but because she has a strong speech impediment, she is stuck in a dreary typing job. When she is discovered by a British captain who realises that Eve’s speech impediment will make an excellent disguise, she jumps at the chance to join the Alice Network, a network of female spies gathering German intelligence for the Allies. She begins working in a restaurant owned by Frenchman René Bordelou, the patrons of whom are exclusively German, as René’s vision is to provide somewhere in France for German officers to relax and unwind. He is the perfect person for whom Eve could work, but he is also dangerously perceptive, and Eve must make compromising choices in order to maintain her cover. Eve’s story was superior to Charlie’s because it actually had stakes. The novel begins in 1947, where we meet a very different Eve to the voracious recruit in 1915. We want to find out why Eve has become so disenchanted, so volatile, and so broken; we want to know what happened to her, and this means that her story has stakes for the reader right from the start. On the whole, Eve’s perspective is also a lot more interesting than Charlie’s; to me, the story of a spy working undercover in wartorn France is much more entertaining than a bratty 19-year-old scouring the French countryside for her estranged cousin. I wish that this novel was solely from Eve’s perspective; it would likely have been a four or even five star read if Charlie wasn’t involved.
Charlie St. Clair, on the other hand, is a much less compelling character than Eve. At the start of the novel, Charlie is traveling to Europe with her mother to get an abortion, as she has become pregnant by a boy at her college. However, her real ambition is to find out if her cousin Rose survived WWII, so she gives her mother the slip and hunts down Eve at her London home, as Eve is connected to a report Charlie tracked down that could determine Rose’s whereabouts. Several reviews have complained that Charlie is bratty and childish, and I don’t disagree, but that’s not the thing that I disliked about Charlie’s perspective. It was just… lackluster. It didn’t have the energy or the thrill of Eve’s storyline, and Charlie had a lot of annoying quirks that made her insufferable to read. For one thing, she referred to her unborn child as her “Little Problem”, which strongly reminded me of Anastasia personifying her subconscious and ‘inner goddess’ in Fifty Shades of Grey, so I obviously couldn’t stand that. Charlie is also meant to be a math genius, and so I was hoping that she would end up getting to use her mathematical prowess for actual math -- I thought it would be cool to have a female character in the STEM field in a book set in the 1940s. However, the majority of the mathematical equations Charlie solves are metaphorical. I suppose it’s clever to have a purported math genius character use the phrase “Solve for х” when deciphering real world problems, but I was disappointed that this particular trait ended up being used in the way that it was. On the whole, Charlie’s story was just less interesting than Eve’s, and I would have been much happier not having to read it alongside the exponentially more thrilling tale of the women of the Alice Network.
Mediocre storylines aside, there was one thing in particular about the novel that I found truly appalling: the huge age gaps between the characters and their love interests. In both of their storylines, Charlie and Eve hook up with men who are significantly older than them. In 1915, 22-year-old Eve falls for the same captain who recruited for the Alice Network, and ends up sleeping with him even though he is already married and is at least in his thirties -- it is never specified exactly how old he is. Granted, Eve is 22, a fully-grown (if not a little naive) adult who can sleep with whomever she pleases, even if the age gap between them is rather inappropriate. Charlie, however, was the truly disturbing case. In 1947, Eve has a thirty-year-old Scottish man named Finn working for her, and Charlie tries to hook up with him because she has low self-esteem. However, Charlie and Finn eventually end up together at the end of the novel, and the reason I found this a little horrifying is because Charlie is consistently referred to as being underage. The novel acknowledges that at 19, Charlie is underage, and yet still she finds herself happily making out with a man 11 years older than her. It was so gross to me that these older men were attracted to, and consequently having sex with, these much younger women. I found it pretty alarming, especially due to the regularity with which Charlie is called underage. The novel literally acknowledges that her relationship with Finn is inappropriate, and yet they still end up getting married and raising Charlie’s daughter together. Perhaps I’m a little prudish when it comes to age gaps, but it feels wrong for a teenager to be hooking up with an adult. These disturbing age gaps pulled the quality of the novel down for me, to a point where I really couldn’t enjoy it anymore, knowing that I would be endorsing something I found so inappropriate.
On the whole, The Alice Network lacks the qualities that make some WWII novels so remarkable and affecting. I stand by my claim that if Eve’s story stood on its own, The Alice Network would have been close to a five star read; as it stands, however, I can only award it a three, and that’s when I’m feeling generous and not thinking about the startling similarities between Charlie St. Clair and Anastasia Steele. I do plan to read Kate Quinn’s next novel, The Huntress, as I think she does have a talent for plot; I just hope that she channels all of the Eve energy and none of the Charlie, or I’m going to regret my choice.
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