FICTION

A Most Clever Girl

by Stephanie Marie Thornton
Berkley. Sept. 2021. 416p. ISBN 9780593198407. pap. $17. F
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Fictionalized biographies of historical women are Thornton’s specialty (her most recent is And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis). Her eighth novel features Elizabeth Bentley, a Vassar-educated woman who joined the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) because of its opposition to Hitler. A social misfit, she also hoped it could help her make at least one friend in New York City. Elizabeth falls in love with her boss and through him becomes a spymaster for the USSR. Eventually, her usefulness to the CPUSA fades, and she finds refuge as an FBI informant. Bentley’s memoir (Out of Bondage) makes her briefly famous in the 1950s, but the Rosenbergs and others stay in the public eye, while Elizabeth has been for the most part forgotten. Thornton’s novel hews closely to the factual details of Elizabeth’s life but adds the emotional underpinnings that make her more than a lurid headline.
VERDICT The smashing plot piledriver is the confrontation between Elizabeth and Catherine, a vengeful young orphan whose mother’s death may have been caused by Elizabeth’s espionage. The wily Elizabeth snatches center stage and propels readers through the Red Scare and the opening years of the Cold War. Even though fictional, Thornton’s interpretation rings true and tragic.
Reviewed by Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA , Sep 01, 2021
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