The Other Typistby Suzanne Rindell
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Just released: May 2013
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
Genre: 1920s, women's fiction
Hardback: 368 pages
Rating: 5
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Rose Baker seals men’s fates. With a few strokes of the keys that sit before her, she can send a person away for life in prison. A typist in a New York City Police Department precinct, Rose is like a high priestess. Confessions are her job. It is 1923, and while she may hear every detail about shootings, knifings, and murders, as soon as she leaves the interrogation room she is once again the weaker sex, best suited for filing and making coffee.
This is a new era for women, and New York is a confusing place for Rose. Gone are the Victorian standards of what is acceptable. All around her women bob their hair, they smoke, they go to speakeasies. Yet prudish Rose is stuck in the fading light of yesteryear, searching for the nurturing companionship that eluded her childhood. When glamorous Odalie, a new girl, joins the typing pool, despite her best intentions Rose falls under Odalie’s spell. As the two women navigate between the sparkling underworld of speakeasies by night and their work at the station by day, Rose is drawn fully into Odalie’s high-stakes world. And soon her fascination with Odalie turns into an obsession from which she may never recover.
First sentence:
They said the typewriter would unsex us.
My two-bits:
In-a-word(s): villainess
Cleverly told thriller tale of friendship and obsessions among women. The ending snapped at me!
* review copy courtesy of publisher
* rumor has it that Keira Knightly will produce and take the leading role for the movie version of this book - i think she would be perfect in it
