Trigger warning: murder

Katharina "Rina" Edgeworth is the wife of a pediatric surgeon in post-World War II New York City. After an exciting career as a translator for the United Nations, she is struggling with motherhood and being a housewife.

The first quarter of the novel is spent reminiscing about the glory days of single life and the woes of having an infant and a toddler at the same time. When she's at her breaking point, Rina is approached by a man from the FBI asking about an old lover. Desperate for something other than her current life, she agrees to help him.

Rina goes to meetings of the Civil Rights Congress with African-American leader Turner Wells as an entree into the Communist Party. She makes a friend with one of the young women who is supporting communism and can see why a young, rich white woman would be drawn to the tenets of communism.

Rina's husband isn't supportive of Rina doing anything other than parenting their children. He blames her mental health and drinking for her absenteeism and asks her to go to therapy. This is perfect for Rina, who uses therapy as her excuse for espionage.

For a novel about the Red Scare and espionage, the action of the novel is lacking. The story is more of a character study of an intelligent woman who feels chafed by her children.

Recommended only for fans of post-World War II fiction and readers of novels about the Red Scare.

Katharina (Rina) Edgeworth is a woman with everything. She's beautiful, educated, speaks multiple languages, has two adorable sons, a doctor husband that allows the family to live a life in a beautiful apartment in Manhattan. BUT...she's bored out of her gourd! Before marriage to her surgeon husband Tom, she worked at the newly created United Nations, using her language skills as a translator. Now, she's home alone with a toddler and a new baby, no nanny, no nightly after-work socializing and nightclubbing with her girlfriends, no adult conversation. She's exhausted and has no support. This is the role women are expected to fill in the late 1940s and 1950s. Women may have a college degree and skills, but motherhood and family life is the highest calling a woman can have. Right?

Rina is contacted by a mysterious man who asks her to help him connect with someone from her past. From this project she realizes that her husband really takes her for granted and has a God complex because he saves lives, she loves her children but they are leaches draining her of her person-hood and leaving her an exhausted shell. She realizes that she can be a much better wife and mother IF she can use her impressive intelligence, education and language skills. It's also the beginning of the Cold War and the Red Scare in the U.S.

This book reminded me how different life today is for women, yet still the same. Getting an education and being intelligent is encouraged and now there is much more support for a woman with a career and a family. Rina reconnects with a man from her college days and learns about the current political climate swirling around the Red Scare and fear of Communist expansions after WW2. The lifestyle described is a bit Mad Men like in the way the rigid roles expected of men and women are written and the way I pictured the Upper West Side apartment, decor, clothes and cocktail parties, the book really brought that era to life. If you enjoy historical fiction and exploring the post WW2 world and the political fall-out of that conflict, how gender roles changed or didn't change, you should read this book.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

Katharina has an Ivy League education, speaks five languages, and once worked as a translator for the UN. But now married to a wealthy pediatric surgeon, she spends her days caring for her two sons and missing her exciting career. When she’s approached by an FBI agent about helping gather KGB intelligence, she jumps at the chance to escape her domestic circle.

The strongest part of this book for me is probably what made it weakest for readers looking for danger and thrills: a look at motherhood and working women in post-WWII America. Katharina is a complex and relatable character grappling with the unrealistic expectations for mothers. I was intrigued by the setup of the FBI plot, but it ended with more of a fizzle than a bang. I also would have enjoyed a more critical look at the FBI’s actions during the Red Scare. But I enjoyed Karin Tanabe’s writing and would be interested in reading more!

I enjoyed the novel and storyline, This is set in the 1950s with some earlier flashbacks of the 1940s. I didn’t feel the full historical fiction aspect in the story. Just the 50s mindset of the husband! I wanted to smack Tom!
Thank you NetGalley.

Katherina Edgeworth seemingly has it all: a luxurious Fifth Avenue apartment, a handsome pediatric surgeon husband (an heir), two young toddler boys and the ability to mingle at the highest level of post WWII NY society.

But before all that, Rina, fluent in four languages, was working at the newly formed United Nations as an interpreter. Here she met interesting people and believed she was doing meaningful work. She also lived a bit on the edge meeting men and frequenting night spots. It was the glam life she left for her golden cage with a man she loved – but the domesticity of a Fifties housewife, even an upper class one, is becoming tedious and boring.

Then an FBI agent approaches her. He has been studying her daily routines and knows her past. For him, she has the perfect skill set and past connections (from her university days) to work as an informant/courier to infiltrate what may be a Communist cell based in Manhattan. McCarthyism is running rampant….Rina is bored as she sees this as a patriotic escape. But at what cost to her personally?

Good points of this book are the cover art and the depiction of the upper-crust NYC life, landmarks and the vein of 50s noire intrigue. Yet I was not sure if I ever truly believed her love/devotion to her husband/kids. I didn’t get a sense of any of her political leanings. She seemed more like a Sixties woman plopped into a Fifties plot. But good writing propelled the story line. Not many recent books handling this time period or idea…so definitely worth a read. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this title for review.

This book takes us back to New York City in the early 1950s and it made me grateful for the progress we’ve made in the freedom of women’s lives since those days (still a lot to improve, of course!). The title has a double meaning: both the spying-sense of intelligence and the brain-power-sense. Katharina/Rina is the titular Woman of Intelligence. She speaks several languages and used to work at City Hall and the United Nations. She was a freedom-loving single girl in NYC in the 1940s, but she is now married and dealing with two very young sons, with virtually no help. No babysitter is good enough for her husband, Tom! Her husband works VERY long hours as a pediatric surgeon and she feels all the constraints American society put on women in the 1950s, even as she lives in a luxurious apartment on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. I found Tom to be extremely infuriating and Rina’s situation very upsetting.

When the opportunity to do something helpful for the FBI arises, it gives her a chance to use her brain and also get out of the house without the boys, something she longs for. It was hard to believe the various ways she managed to get out of her apartment without anyone knowing, even in the middle of the night to make calls from a pay phone (there were always building employees watching, although a large tip was eventually mentioned).

I loved how the book started with a “day from hell” out with the two little boys and a neighbor and that neighbor’s daughter. Every parent’s nightmare excursion! The story got bogged down in the middle, with all the comings and goings, secret meetups and messages, but picked up again toward the end.

I liked how the Communists were portrayed by the author, and how she showed that at that time the particular group Rina got involved with had an emphasis on hope for civil rights for blacks (she used the era-appropriate term “Negroes” throughout the book). I wasn’t convinced by the interracial romantic interest and I also didn’t think it was necessary to the plot. I enjoyed the skewering of the lives of the very rich (Rina’s in-laws, among others).

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I was interested to read this book about a housewife turned female informant for the FBI. I went in interested to learn about the government’s efforts to root out Communism in the 50s but stayed to understand Katharina’s story.

I can’t imagine being a wife in the 50s. The ideals that society put on women were just too much. Too many constraints, too many rules, and far too much judgement.

I loved seeing Katharina find herself through her undercover work, but sometimes those scenes of her life at home were hard to read about because I came to despise her husband.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for my review copy. All opinions are my own.

Is anyone else obsessed with female spy books?

I’ve read so many books with females as spies in recent years and I love them so much. I really love hearing about these empowering women who are not written about nearly enough even though they have been around for centuries.
I loved that was that Katharina’s life as a mother and wife balancing the expectations of women at the time was explored in addition to her work as an FBI informant. I have to admit that the way her husband spoke to her and the expectation of women of the day left me feeling very uncomfortable which is a credit to the writing.
Her life in the McCarthy era while helping to fight communism was shown in all its womanly hardships and I loved that.
I’d love to read this with my book club and discuss it together, because there is so much to talk about with this one.

I’d recommend it for fans of The Alice Network and Code Name Helene

The take-away question set forth in this novel, set in the mid 1940's - mid 1950's, is how much of herself is a woman expected to set aside to become a wife and mother? This debate is still ongoing today.

Katharina West led quite a life while single in the 1940's. A graduate of Vassar, Rina speaks four languages, and worked as a translator for the United Nations during its first years. Her abilities were valued during the day, and her nights were devoted to having fun. After marrying the rich, socially-elite, well-known, handsome (etc., etc., etc.), pediatric surgeon Tom Edgeworth, he expected her to put all that aside and concentrate on getting pregnant, and then devote all her time to raising their family.

Feeling overwhelmed by the unending needs of her two young sons, and frustrated to tears by both the lack of adult contact (Tom, a workaholic, is rarely home) and the inability to use her intelligence in a stimulating, meaningful way, she jumps at the chance to become an informant for the FBI.

Okay, that's all you need to know to decide if you want to read this novel. It attracted my attention because of the storyline, and lost it because of the blandness of the characters. Though I have struggled with being a working mother myself, I found it hard to relate to or care about the characters.

I appreciate NetGalley and St. Martin's Press allowing me to read an ARC of this book which is scheduled to be published on 7/20/21. All opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

I think that the synopsis for this novel might be doing it a bit of a disservice. While beautifully written and fascinatingly researched, this novel is more women’s fiction than it is a complex spy thriller.
Admittedly, I think that this book might find more common ground with someone who is a parent, or had a more traditional upbringing than myself. However, despite the slight disassociation, I still found the emotional value of the writing, and the theme of a life unfulfilled by what society tells us we should want, very poignant. I also always appreciate a novel willing to explore the maternal loss and eventual reclamation of identity, as it is a “feminine” issue not often discussed or depicted in the face of a more publicly acceptable and patriarchal idea that motherhood is this great blessing that makes every woman’s life worthwhile.
Regarding my final thoughts, I would say that A Woman of Intelligence is made to be a bookclub pick. It is a novel that demands discussion and could act as a catalyst for female bonding and sisterhood, yet can also speak to any person who has felt both over and under burdened by social expectation.

Katharina Edgeworth gave up her freedom and an interesting, satisfying career to be the wife of a wealthy doctor and mother to two difficult children. By the standards of the day, she should be happy, but Katharina feels trapped. Katharina longs for a more fulfilling life and when an exciting opportunity to assist in the FBI's efforts to root out Communism presents itself, she jumps at the chance.

I adored Katharina and found myself identifying with her. It was refreshing to read a book where a woman character wanted more from life than to be a wife and mother. I admired Katharina's drive to forge an identity outside of wife of Tom the doctor and mother of two boys. This isn't always easy today when many times women are expected to be wives and mothers first and foremost, putting aside their own interests, desires, and goals for the good of the family; it would have been even more difficult in the 1950s.

I thoroughly enjoyed this spy novel with a feminine twist! Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I am a huge fan of Karin Tanabe's books! I enjoyed this one but not as much as A Hundred Suns because it got a bit long-winded and I got a bit tired of reading about the main character's marriage woes. But, would definitely recommend for historical fiction lovers!

This is the story about women who lived when the men in America went overseas during WW2 and the women they left behind, some of which took over men's work, be it as a lawyer, translater, or other jobs that belonged to men at this time in America's history. When the men returned, women were supposed to get married, be their wives, and have their babies. So, what about the women who didn't want this life? What about the women who wanted to work and not be pigeonholed? This is the story about what it might have been like to be one of those women. I feel that the difficulties Katerina faced trying to be true to herself were definitely struggles explored in this novel. It was also well narrated.

Katharina is a 38 yo woman who gave up her career as a translator at the newly formed UN to marry a prominent doctor and begin a family. This chronicles her life as a single, party girl into a proper socialite wife/mother of two who is asked to spy by the FBI on a former college lover who is a prominent Communist leader in NY.

I’ll be honest, this was an odd book for me and a hard one to rank. While I liked that the protagonist was trying to fight back against the social norms of the time (early 1950s)…sexual discrimination, elitism, the wife- staying-home stereotype, I could not connect with her or any of the characters. Yes, I felt her frustration and unhappiness, I couldn’t discount that she had made some of the decisions herself that were causing her angst. I felt she should have tried more to stand up to her husband/in-laws/society rather than being meek and mild through much of the story.

While she seemed to suffer some postpartum depression (she seemed at times neglectful and to regret having children), the spy story served as a catalyst to embolden her to take back her life. But she also came off to me as selfish, and I wasn’t as sympathetic as I felt the author intended. While I know others will appreciate and relate to it more, I found it well-written but just an OK for me.

My thanks to #NetGalley and #StMartinsPress for providing me the free early arc for review. The opinions are strictly my own.

I am obsessed with this book. I will be buying it when it publishes. It was action packed without being too much or feeling bogged down with the details. I also enjoyed the characters throughout.

A privileged 5th Avenue wife and mother is living a double life during WWII, trying to balance family obligations and secret life as an intelligence agent. I was swept up in this atmospheric thrill ride of commitment and patriotism!

"Karin Tanabe's A Woman of Intelligence is an exhilarating tale of post-war New York City, and one remarkable woman’s journey from the United Nations, to the cloistered drawing rooms of Manhattan society, to the secretive ranks of the FBI.". I liked this a lot. Katharine was a fascinating woman; I would have liked her better if she ditched the husband.

I liked this story. A very independent woman college, works at the UN, (1940's) really enjoying life. Marries and becomes a wife, a mother and loses herself completely, until she is approached by the FBI to spy! Yes, spy. So combine an unhappy wife, not so happy mother and spying and you've got yourself a good story of historical fiction. Fast read.

I wanted so much to love this book, but the motherhood story was just too much. It was very heavy and caused the story to slow way down. When, at 45%, the main plot of the story wasn't in full motion, I put it down. Thank you for letting me give it a shot!

A story about a motivated & career-minded woman who was born several decades too early! Katharina is a woman who is married to a successful man, but seeks to be a successful woman herself. She works first as a UN translator then later moves on to the FBI.

The storyline of this book spoke to me, but unfortunately I did not find myself sucked in as much as I had hoped. The book was slow-moving with so many details about her family life, I lost track of what the story was actually about.