"It’s this motherhood thing that is making you look so cadaverous,” she said, giving me another once-over. I shrugged. “Small children are terrible, Katharina. Everyone knows it, but nobody says it out loud. It makes us look weak and cowardly. Unfeminine.”
It is truly frustrating that society still expects motherhood to make us fulfilled and to never complain about our children, or how exhausting it is mentally and emotionally.
I related with Katharina so much; post-partum depression, missing my career, not having "a village" to raise children on the hard days, a husband always working, and completely clueless on what it takes to survive daily. I'd take this woman for cocktails immediately.
Buy this novel. Seriously. Pour a martini and lock yourself in the bathroom. Make the spouse deal with the kids while you read this.
A born and bred New Yorker, Katharina is the daughter of immigrants, Ivy-League-educated, and speaks four languages. As a single girl in 1940s Manhattan, she is a translator at the newly formed United Nations, devoting her days to her work and the promise of world peace—and her nights to cocktails and the promise of a good time.
Now the wife of a beloved pediatric surgeon and heir to a shipping fortune, Katharina is trapped in a gilded cage, desperate to escape the constraints of domesticity. So when she is approached by the FBI and asked to join their ranks as an informant, Katharina seizes the opportunity. A man from her past has become a high-level Soviet spy, but no one has been able to infiltrate his circle. Enter Katharina, the perfect woman for the job.
Navigating the demands of the FBI and the secrets of the KGB, she becomes a courier, carrying stolen government documents from D.C. to Manhattan. But as those closest to her lose their covers, and their lives, Katharina’s secret soon threatens to ruin her.
With the fast-paced twists of a classic spy thriller, and a nuanced depiction of female experience, A Woman of Intelligence shimmers with intrigue and desire.
