The Other Typist

I was so desperately hoping for a [b:Death in Venice 53061 Death in Venice Thomas Mann https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388347705s/53061.jpg 17413130] except with ladies. [b:Pretty Little Liars 162085 Pretty Little Liars (Pretty Little Liars, #1) Sara Shepard https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1377830522s/162085.jpg 2191061] for grown ups in the 1920s. A mysterious, beautiful woman, a tight ass deeply repressed unreliable protagonist. Sexual tension and underground speakeasies, it should have been perfect.I chalked it up originally to me being so busy and distracted lately, that it took me an uncharacteristic two months to finish a 350 page book. I've realized that it was in fact just dull as hell. From page one, our narrator Rose doesn't understand where things begin or end, so she delves right into her description, her thoughts, her judgements. Its very difficult to open a book with intangibles, there's nothing really to latch onto, nothing to ground you in the story. Rose is a self-described tissue of a woman, exceptionally plain and uninteresting. The point of this characterization is so that you can see why she would cleave herself to a woman like Odalie so quickly and rapturously. Rose has her convictions, and while her arrogance and uptight nature make her far from likable, it does make her her. I could hear little pieces of my teenage self in the immature way Rose would pass judgement on the other women that weren't Odalie Lazare. Rose is a “not like other girls” girl of the orphan-raised-in-a-nunnery variety. In a way, her plainness is fascinating. Now if only it had a suitable counterweight.Odalie is everything Rose is not. She's charismatic and outgoing, beautiful and stylish, and most of all, dangerous and oh so slutty. Rose becomes obsessed with her from the moment Odalie drops her brooch on the precinct floor when she comes in for her first day of work as the new typist. Now, I know what its like to fixate on someone, to admire them from afar for all their strange allure. So I related to Rose quite a bit at first. But as Rose and Odalie developed their relationship, and I got to know both of them better, I started to...not really get it. What the hell made Odalie so damn special? Sure, she was charming and attractive, and the author took every opportunity to talk about how yet another person was falling at Odalie's feet, but I felt like there needed to be more depth for this kind of character to be believable. She was flawed, but only in ways that made her more mysterious. Nothing about her was grounded. And let's be real, she and Rose lived together. Once you see someone shaving their legs while sitting on the toilet or crumbling breakfast all over themselves, that mad obsessive love has a tendency to die off. Odalie or Rose's love for her never felt real.Which might have been entirely the point. In much the same way we never really know who Odalie is and receive multiple versions of her past, we never really know what the hell happens in this book. Rindell might as well have ended it with Rose waking up and realizing it was all a dream. You know what that is? It's a big fat fucking cheat. When the climax finally arrived, I was legitimately afraid that someone would ask “Who's Odalie?” or “You are Odalie Lazare” and I would have flipped a shit and thrown the book in the trash. Thankfully, it did not go that far, but it was pretty close. And there are no clues or hints that lead up to the “twist,” though there are pounds of foreshadowing. I just thought Rose was eventually going to kill her. I would have much preferred if Rose killed her.

Rose has made a good life for herself. Though she grew up an orphan, she has learned a new, useful skill for a woman alone in 1923, typing, and she has found a good job in the police department, typing up criminal confessions. Rose is proud of the moral, upright person she is.

And then a new typist arrives. Odalie is mysterious, beautiful, affluent, hypnotising, and it doesn't take long for Odalie to work her magic on naive Rose. Soon Rose and Odalie are visiting speakeasies and drinking illegal gin and living together in an expensive hotel. Rose senses something is not right, but she can't seem to help herself.

Just the right note of mystery in this little tale that took me right back into the Roaring Twenties and led me to try to repeatedly warn Rose against her new and dangerous friend.

Review to follow...