I appreciate the question around which A Woman of Intelligence by Karen Tanabe is based. What compromise does a woman make between independence and a career and home and family? The reality is that the discussion continues even today and definitely more so in the context of women than men. Although the character and story was not for me, this conversation is what I take away from this book.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2022/10/a-woman-of-intelligence.html

Reviewed for NetGalley. ( )

Katharina Edgeworth has a life that most women of her time would kill for, a surgeon husband, two healthy children, and a beautiful apartment in the heart of Manhattan but feels that she could be so much more.

Katharina discovers that she is being scouted by the FBI to help stop the spread of Communism in New York due to a previous relationship with a member of the KGB, unbeknownst to her. The FBI uses her history with this man to get her close to him and gather important information.

She begins living a double life, doting mother and wife by day and FBI spy by night. Her lives begin to collide when her husband realizes she has been employing a babysitter and spending hours upon hours away from their children. Katharina has to decide where her life is leading and how to balance her two selves.

While the idea of the story is an interesting story, the story itself is lacking. The novel starts slow and never really gathers enough steam to make it interesting. There were moments when I thought the story would pick up the pace but was then let down when nothing extraordinary happened. I am hoping this scenario is a one-off for the author but I would love to read something else by her that may grab me more. ( )

I've previously read and enjoyed Karen Tanabe's novels The Gilded Years and A Hundred Suns, so I was very excited to read her upcoming novel, A Woman Of Intelligence.

In A Woman Of Intelligence, Rina used to be a UN translator, using her fluency in four languages, but now she's married a doctor and given up her work to be a full-time mother. Caring for toddlers is frustrating, and she misses her old life and her old friends.

A few times, as Rina catalogued her frustrations, I felt like asking, but why? You have plenty of money to hire a nanny, you have the skills and contacts for a fulfilling job, so... why? Why are you dragging your sons around the city and hating every day of your life? It only worked because her closest girlfriend from her UN days also wondered why Rina would pack it all in for housewife life.

She gets a break in the monotony when she's approached by a government agent with a request. Her college boyfriend may be working for the Russians, and Rina is quickly caught up in Cold War spy drama, attending underground communist meetings, delivering photo negatives and arranging "accidental" meetings, pretending to be a Red while delivering all her information back to her government contact. There's a lot of intrigue and drama here, and tension comes from a nagging worry that some of the double agents were not actually on Rina's side. The world of pay phones and camera film added to the intrigue.

Again with the romance, I found myself asking, but why? Rina's love interest was nice enough but I felt more like Rina was lonely than that this was a tragic love story. I did love the character growth this provoked, and it highlighted Rina's struggle to be a supportive doctor's wife and fulfilled SAHM, while quietly running espionage missions.

Overall, A Woman Of Intelligence is an enjoyable historical spy story with a feminist slant.

A Woman of Intelligence is by Karin Tanabe, and will be published by St. Martin's Press on July 20, 2021.

Thank you again, The Book Club CookBook! We were getting together to discuss our last book and planned to read another book, but when we all crowded in my kitchen and they saw this sitting on the table, we did a last-minute switch! Definitely glad we did!

A Woman of Intelligence is about Katharina Edgeworth, born and raised in New York. In the 1940s, she was a single woman during the day; she devoted her time to her job as a translator for the United Nations and spent her nights doing what most young single females did and still do now!

But now, in the 1950s post-war New York, Katharina is now a married woman and on the outside seems to live the ideal life. The doctor's husband, two kids, and a fifth avenue apartment. But she isn't happy or content to be just a homemaker she wants more in her life, something that is her own. So when the FBI offers her a job to work as a spy/informant, she jumps at the chance!

I think as a mother or wife, I and everyone else have been in Katharina’s shoes. It can be hard not to lose ourselves in helping our kids discover who they are. It's a balancing act, one that can be hard to maintain from time to time. The time frame that Katharina is living in sure didn't help or encourage a woman to be more or that it was ok to feel you needed something more to your life.

So obviously this was a very thought-provoking book for us to read together! Could you imagine living back then? They sent all the men off to war, so to keep the country moving and to care for their families, the women went to work! So they get a taste of what it’s like to be independent and prove that your sex shouldn’t matter! But now the men are home so you need to go back home, cook, clean and be the lovely, perfect housewife again! That is just crazy!

Normally now I would tell you our thoughts on the book, but this time the author's note says it perfectly!

“What about, the woman stays in the picture?
“As Adrienne Rich wrote in her book “Of Woman Born,” which I so wish I'd read as a new mother, “we have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.” ( )

I can completely relate to what life must have been like for Mrs. Katharina Edgeworth. Not so much to the being rich part, but definitely to the part about being a slave to two children who are obviously taking more than they are giving back at this point. From the outside her life is quite enviable: living on Fifth Avenue, in a huge apartment with basically endless financial resources and the status of being married to arguably the most successful children’s surgeon in New York. However, beneath the surface is a modern woman stuck in a rigid social class that still believes that women should be at home with the children. For a woman who ha a masters degree and used to work at the United Nations, speaking baby talk and cleaning up spit up is just as fulfilling as her husband hopes it is.Following a particularly rough day, Katharina meets a FBI agent who wants her to take on the secret mission of spying on a communist ring centered around a former classmate from her years at Columbia. Feeling trapped, Katharina accepts the mission, and In so doing it leads her down a path of questioning her entire life and her role in it. This is a story of a woman who became someone else and in the process figured out who she really was. A charming tale of life in a different time, when women stayed home with the children and the biggest threat the world faced was the “red menace” of communist Russia. I thoroughly enjoyed this engaging story, and look forward to reading more from Karin Tanabe. Thank you to Netgalley for the copy in exchange for the honest review. ( )