The Lavender List by Meg HarringtonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was quite interested in this book when I first noticed it (I forget when and where that was). Seemed quite intriguing, with a relatively obvious vibe of 'Agent Carter' sprinkled through the book description. But.
That 'obvious vibe' turned out to correspond to what was found in the book - at least for the first 46% of it. Whereupon the book leapt forward in time onto a side track I didn't expect or want.
Man I hate when the condescending asshole man ‘wants to protect’ his ‘love’ so he ‘doesn’t allow’ (as if that’s his choice) a woman to do something . . . like say dangerous (in a particular type of book that ‘dangerous’ part might be ‘getting out of bed while pregnant), fun, risky, whatever. Occasionally it’s worded in just the right way with just the right characters so that it is less annoying.
‘Obviously enough’, the preceding paragraph doesn’t apply, right? I mean, we are talking about two women here, not some alpha male caveman type pounding his chest while grunting ‘me man, you woman’. I’d say ‘to be fair’ things were worded differently here (not that that was necessarily better (view spoiler)). Except – later, when people talked about it, they reverted back to ‘I didn’t want you in danger’ type of talk. And the characters didn’t fit.
They really really didn’t fit. For that ‘you weak woman, me strong women, me protect you, you cower over there and hide. Listen to me! DO IT!’ type of thing. For one, the one doing that ‘I strong woman’ came from a privileged pampered background – and developed into a legitimately capable strong woman with fighting skills. What about the ‘weak woman, do what I say?’ part of the equation, a real damsel in distress type, right? Um. No. A highly skilled multiple bank robber as a teenager. Not exactly a cowering wilting flower of delicacy who needed to be protected by someone self-sacrificing themselves for love by leaving their life. For fuck sake.
Got distracted there. Let me see if I can get back into this review thingie.
1 – Story about Laura Wright who worked for the OSS in France leading a resistance group. The war is over now, though, the OSS is disbanded, and women are no longer needed or wanted in the spy force (and, growing more apparent, in the work force). Just like Agent Peggy Carter, Laura Wright also left the war having left behind a ‘love of her life’ type person – shockingly, both Carter’s and Wright’s loves were/are men (though only Carter’s ‘love’ is a superhero (Captain America).
It’s 1946 and Wright now works in a bomb factory (I’d the idea she was a manager or . . . um . . . something like that). She’s from Connecticut. With a New England kind of accent. She lives in a large building in New York with a bunch of other women. And, as the book opens, she is asked by one of her old colleagues to do something spy like. She also has a friend who lives in that same building, and who works in a dinner that Laura likes to visit. And has a French ‘friend’ (instead of English, like on the TV show). But that prologue part, that ‘as the book opens part’, is the only point during which Laura has a point of view until much later in the book, about half way through she begins to have her side of the things pop back up again. The first half (and half of the second half) of the book is from the point of view of that friend that works in the dinner.
2 – Amelia Maldonado is a ‘struggling actress’ who works at a diner, lives in building filled with women, and has connections to the mafia – family connections. Her point of view appears throughout the book (except in the prologue), though alternates with Laura’s point of view at times in the second half.
3 – This POV choice – having the story from Amelia’s instead of Laura’s point of view for the 1946 part of the book, means that there are a lot of ‘Amelia noticed that Laura had another bruise . . . Amelia noticed that Laura was sneaking out of the building . . .Amelia noticed another bruise when she saw Laura the next day . . ‘type of stuff going on. As in, while there was action going on, the only part the reader knows about directly is when Amelia herself is in on the action. This does occur, just less often than the actual spy.
4 – The book takes place in 1946, then somewhere around the half way point, leaps ahead to 1952. With some huge changes having occurred to the two lead characters during this six year break from the reader’s eye.
The book started off interestingly enough, but then we got out of the prologue and suddenly everything was from the waitress’ point of view. That was . . . well, I could live with that. Watching as Amelia tried to figure out what was going on with Laura, why she kept getting beaten up (and having some rather interesting ideas that were reasonable but wrong). Investigating. Cleaning a diner. Trying out for acting roles. You know, just living life in the late 1940s.
I was somewhat less excited about how the book turned, though, at roughly the 46% mark (somewhere after there). Had an initial wave of dissatisfaction with what was going on when the world changed to the 1950s, but there was enough to keep my interest and keep me reading.
So – the long and short of it is – it was neither as good as I was hoping when I first heard of the book; but it was also not as bad as I thought it was going to be after that ‘deep wave of dissatisfaction’ overwhelmed me at the half way point.
Rating: 3.33
December 9 2016
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