Katharine McMahon's The Crimson Rooms is easily one of my favorite reads so far this year. I loved this book. There's no indecision over this one. And I'll admit to some bad behavior. I couldn't put it down, but I didn't want it to end--not only for the reason it was so totally absorbing that I had to make it last, but I was afraid of the story ending badly. So. I flipped to the back of the book to see if I could peek at the outcome. I rarely do that, only with books I become so wrapped up in that I feel some weird emotional connection to. I often wonder if that is a failing on my part as a reader (distance is good, right?), but I can't help it. From the first page I was totally engaged with the characters and their world, which in this case is 1920s London.
Katharine McMahon's writing is sophisticated and her storytelling complex, creating characters who are fully formed yet whose personalities elicit varying responses from the reader as the story unfolds. It's not just that she tells this interesting story set in an interesting period of history with lots of little bits to make it feel authentic, but you really inhabit the space and are exposed to the not always pleasant attitudes of the era. Characters you might have disliked upon introduction morph into something else entirely as you go, because nothing is black and white, and the people in this story rarely are so obvious that you can see through them.
Much of the story is bound up in events that occurred during WWI. Nearly every character carries with them some weight from the war--sadness, grief, shame, remorse. Evelyn Gifford feels both immense sadness at the loss of her beloved younger brother, James, but also guilt as it was only through his death was she able to study and work towards becoming one of England's first female attorneys. It's a bittersweet position to be in and not a day passes that she doesn't think about him and cherish his memory. It's a memory that becomes ever so slightly tarnished when a young Canadian woman arrives on the Gifford's doorstep late one evening with a young son in tow who is the spitting image of her brother. Unknown to Evelyn James had a wartime romance with a nurse, so everything she thought to be true at once comes into question with the arrival of Meredith Duffy and her son Jamie.
The death of her father means what's left of the family--Evelyn, her mother, grandmother and aunt Prudence are left in straitened circumstances. And suddenly there are two new mouths to feed as the family feels a responsibility to the mother and child. Though impressive in the accomplishment, being a female attorney hardly means a reliable income, and hers is the family's only income. Actually the opposite is the case as women attorneys are granted little respect or help and are more often treated as anomalies and a threat to proper society. With no family connections she has little luck finding work and ends up in the firm of Breen and Balcombe, Breen being one to take on hard cases with a "passion for proving everyone else wrong."
The more tedious affairs of the firm end up in Evelyn's lap but she does become involved in two very different cases, which will test her mettle. A woman with three small children has entrusted them into the care of an orphanage, not realizing that by signing papers she couldn't read she was giving up her rights to. She asks Breen to represent her and help get them back, but he passes on the case to Evelyn much to the unhappiness of the woman who doesn't believe in Evelyn's abilities. But it's a murder case that Breen has taken on that Evelyn gets completely wrapped up in, and a successful young lawyer representing the client's employer who she falls for that will trip her up and turn her life upside down. The man accused of murdering his wife is likely to hang for a crime he didn't commit, but he's unwilling to talk about the events leading up to the murder. As Evelyn pokes about in the circumstances surrounding the crime she discovers lies and deceits that she may not be able to prove but knows to be true and discovers people close to her are involved.
As you can see there is a lot going on here. In less talented hands this would be a mess of a story, but McMahon truly handles it with aplomb and each thread of the story will eventually merge with the others creating an intricate piece of storytelling. Evelyn is such an interesting character, strong willed and independent yet uncertain in her feelings, too. Meredith's enthusiasm shows her how entrenched she and her relatives are in their staid lifestyle so long overshadowed by grief. The war may be long over but it still has a grip on the character's lives. This is a story filled with betrayals, but also one filled with a certain amount of hope, too.
As for flipping to the back of the book? Well, let's just say that while it might not have ended exactly as I'd have wanted it to, those last hundred pages made a difference in how I felt about the story and its outcome (meaning you should never flip to the back of the book). It was a completely satisfying ending despite my own uncertainties, and I could almost flip back to the front of the book and start all over again--that's how much I liked it. Although this is the first novel I've read by McMahon, I did listen to The Alchemist's Daughter and it was one of the best audio books I've come across (I'm very picky about the person reading the story, and this one was very well done). I don't seem to see much written about Katharine McMahon, which is a pity as I've been very impressed by her work. I'm already looking forward to picking up one of her other books and might just have to see if my shelves have anything else to offer.