Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Down and Out in Lille and Limoges

2025-Jan-11

The Alice Network

The first review of the year! That’s just a pedestrian remark on what time it is. There is nothing more than that. Another book read and needing critiquing. That's how it was last year, and so it will be this, and all years henceforth. Until I stop reading books, pamphlets, well written butter labels, and the like. Or when I lose the ability to write blog posts here.

Among those many books I’ve read, and talked about here, are many spy books. Mostly non-fiction and a handful of fiction stuff. Among the fiction, they are usually delivered by either John Le Carre or Ian Fleming. I suppose I have read spy-fiction that took place in more fantasy or futuristic settings. I don’t file those stories away under the ‘spy’ category in my head. That section is reserved for stories that dig deep into that being part of the protagonist's career. I recall that the first The Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, had a shapeshifting spy-type character using his wiles to gain intelligence that aids a larger cause. An interstellar war between cultural relativist The Culture vs some religious space kingdom. That book had a lot more going on besides the actual spycraft, and that is why I do not put that book in the Fredlambuth.com annals of spy novels. Ultimately what I remember about that novel is the sci-fi novelties the author presented.

The Cold War or The Great Game to me are the only valid settings for a bonafide spy novel. This is an obvious personal prejudice. This is my blog, so it shall be adhered to in the editorial standards of this publication. Those are the few conditions I can think of where professional spying can be somebody’s main career, rather than a bonus that comes from being in a place where information is being shared.

Of course, spies existed at all times in history. There have always been secrets and there have been people working for others to gather those secrets. What I think situations like The Cold War or The Great Game offer is a time when full-time secret agents can have careers, legacies, and protegees. During peacetime there is not supposed to be any intelligence gathering, let alone hostile action, between nations. The twilight world in between peace and war is where you can have decades of opportunity for spies to ply their craft. I suppose those conditions could exist in other historical periods. Those other ones don’t have cool looking guns.

What we have in The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn is a novel about spies, but there are no career spies to be seen. At best we get some supporting characters that are the rear echelon MF types that make spying possible. The managers, logistics, personnel, and other staff that push agents out into enemy territory to gather information. I would not call those people ‘spies’. They’re ‘intelligence’ professionals that are not gathering information themselves. They recruit civilian ‘agents’ from a crowd. A professional and trained secret agent is a very rare niche.

The spies of The Alice Network are wartime spies, not pros. These spies are people pulled in by these ‘intelligence’ departments. People who have been found to either show ability to handle themselves well under pressure or are in such a juicy intelligence gathering role that recruitment would be worth the risk of exposure. In this novel's case we have a spy who is a woman too intelligent for her gender’s role in England’s war against Germany in 1915.

As you well know, World War One ended in 1918. That gives the novel’s British agent only a few years to do some daring spy exploits! That does not happen here. It’s not that kind of spy novel. What it is, is a decent novel about something other than swashbuckling espionage. All this commiserating about what is a spy-novel instead of diving right into the merits of this particular book comes from my expectation of at least twice as much spy stuff to happen in the other stories that mirrors the spy story.

The novel follows along two storylines, converging together in the third act. They both developed at a gripping pace that had me wanting to find out what happens next. More than most of the fiction I come across. Even though I confess, I rushed past some of the more melodramatic sections. I was hoping to finally uncover a yet to reveal WW1-WW2 connection that activates the second story into a spy story. No, that big reveal never happened. The spying apparatus that is well furnished in the WW1 story stays dormant throughout the WW2 story. It pops up in spurts. Mere cameos of a spy novel in what is a bildungsroman for delinquent girls.

My condensed description of what the book is about: girls who have the misfortune of being smart enough to see how stunted their chances are to ever get to use their smarts. Girls that turn to self-destruction in some way after coming to the realization of being destined to either a few lady careers (at best!) subservient to men's careers, wifedom/motherhood, or destitution. In this novel, one protagonist comes to maturity in the second year of WW1. The slightly more primary character is the second protagonist, a knocked up rich American teenager in Europe right after WW2 starting the novel in pursuit of a quiet Swiss abortion.

This American girl’s story quickly gets off that track, instead having her going about post-war France in pursuit of a cherished cousin that disappeared into the fog of war. As she gets off the rails of her parents' plan to get an abortion in Switzerland, she puts herself in a roadbound adventure with the spy from the novel's WW1 story, now thirty years older. Also there is a silent and roguishly handsome Irishman in the car that seemed destined to hide some badass with a heart o'gold backstory that gets revealed in a fit of passion. So badass it excuses the prison conviction (that makes him even more roguishly handsome) that forced him into the employ of the elder protagonist.

The WW1 story is what I found to be much more riveting. It does have its share of roguishly handsome men troubled enough to make them irresistible by troubled young ladies. Besides that, it is an intimate look at a competent espionage agent who enjoys her job. Her job has the expected discomforts of near starvation and servitude to uppity German army officers. However it gives her the chance to do something. Without this war, she might have to do the peacetime options for women mentioned before. She wants none of that and who could blame her.

We get to see her bond with the other women in the spy network. Come to think of it now, all the Allied agents in this network were French speaking women. I believe there was mention of other agents in the same network who were men. To my recollection they are spoken of and not seen. A woman spy does present a lot of opportunities to skirt normal procedures. Moments where bluster can get past wartime inconveniences like travel permits or food rationing.

It also presents the thorny issue of what does feminine seduction- the ultimate spycraft tool- gets the agent in the long run. I was surprised but instantly believed the notion that the handlers would think of the agents differently if their female counterparts frankly spoke about sleeping with the enemy. Perhaps in a fictional spy novel, the men would have the professional courtesy of knowing it’s all part of the job.

Some other tidbits I learned from the novel tending more to a woman’s travel story include: the fashion at the time. Indirectly I learned that Cristian Dior, the creator of The New Look, was in fact a dude. Reading a novel about a subject I have burnished several times once more with a woman author gives me a look in the material conditions I rarely think about where it not for reading their books.

To call this a woman’s novel sounds blunt. I think calling a good story merely a ‘spy story’ is also a disservice. Either way, I came into this novel looking for spies. Instead I found a convincing look at a woman doing well at being a spy from the get go. The broader story that brings these two bright young women is more about a sisterhood of troubled girls in the interwar period. How that can lead to impetuous decisions, or easy decision making to taking personal safety risks.

Most of the narration came in first person from the pregnant teenager. The deep emotional longing of a teenager filling the pages grew tiresome to me. I wanted to see the plot going forward. Not sitting around feeling sad about her missing cousin. I wanted to see some action. Find this girl! Maybe shoot some Nazis or dormant agents of the Kaiser. When the character does move in that direction, she hits the administrative walls put up by society on a teenage girl going about unescorted. Being a woman at the time was so boring. It makes writing a believable action story out of it an almost impossible task. Even if it was not what I wanted, it was a pleasant read. I bet my mom would love it.