A Woman of Intelligence: A Novel

 

Shirley J.                       Adult Fiction                                                 Dysfunctional marriage, spies    

A Woman of Intelligence: A Novel by Karin Tanabe       384 pages    

How do you go from a party-girl to a wife and mother to a spy for the F.B.I.?   Set in the 1940s and 50s, college educated Katharina Edgeworth had been an insanely happy party girl going out with friends every night sometimes partying so hard she went to work the next day in the same clothes as the day prior because she went straight from a night of drinking back to the office for a cup of coffee to start her day.  She spoke 4 languages and got her dream job at the United Nations as an interpreter.   Life was good and neither she nor her roommate ever wanted to get married until Katharina met the man of her dreams, a doctor, was swept off her feet and before she knew it she is the mother of two boys, her single friends no longer want to hang with her - they aren't into kids and her oldest is an absolute terror, kidding her, spitting on her, bolting into a run at the drop of a hat and she is overwhelmed and feeling in over her head when her husband keeps long hours at the hospital and they drift apart.   With no friends to talk to she is left to her own devices and feels she is not equipped for this mother role she finds herself in.  Her husband and his family (fabulously wealthy) look down their nose at her and verbally abuse her belittling her for her lack of parental skills.   She just wants to get away and cry.  Life just keeps speeding by on a downhill spiral when she is approached by the FBI and asked to join their ranks as an informant.   Seems one of her semi serious paramours from her college days is now a high-level Soviet spy working hand in hand with the KGB and no one has been able to get close to him.  Enter Katharina who is desperate for an ego boost, an adventure and to once again find that confident woman who ran her own life instead of the milk toast house frau she has become.   Let the adventures begin!   Good story.  She is such a likeable character and you feel her pain when that awful child spits in her face and gives her hell every day, then top it off with her husband who gives her crap over not being a good parent, not loving her children and accusing her of losing her mind altogether to the point he hires a psychologist to meet with her daily while putting her on psychological house arrest.   It will stir the reader to want to spank her child and punch her husband in the face but it will delight with the mata hari of it all.   I recommend this one to teens on up.   Get a good taste of the trials of motherhood and marriage young ones and decide to be strong and be your own person.