The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

 

The perennial joke of how to spread a secret or rumour is:

Tel(-)egram

Tel(-)ephone

Tell(-) a woman

And yet, the women codebreakers of Bletchley Park (BP)maintained their secrecy for life. Some jeopardized their relationships to honour the Official Secrets Act. Some code breakers were sent to mental asylums were they were silenced through brain surgeries to stop them from revealing anything that may have happened at BP.

Rose Code is just not the story of women codebreakers. It was also a little bit about men who chose to work at BP but got ostracized for not joining the actual battle field and they never got to tell anyone of their contribution. Rose Code is a story where ordinary women found purpose. Women who were considered slow learners or just plain stupid, were decoding highly classified information. Working at BP brought about a sense of equality. Men and women worked alongside and maintained a silence that even the direst of circumstances could not change. Kate Quinn, in her closing note mentions of how there were couples who worked at different huts at BP and didn't know the existence of each other for many years. Such was the dedication.

Rose Code was the story of three women (Mab, Osla and Beth) who met by chance, worked for a cause, stood by and supported each other, became the family that one wishes to have and gave us all goals of what women friendships are like.

Rose Code is a story that shows that we may not always read brainy books to show we are intelligent or play the chess for that matter to show our logical thinking; we could be simply solving cryptic crossword puzzles and that was enough to prove one's dexterity.

Rose Code is a story were the above mentioned girls meet and it is also the story of how secrecy, patriotism and sometimes making a random decision not knowing of its consequences can break and shatter friendships and you are left desperately praying for things to be okay.

If a book has been able to make you smile and snigger, got you all choked up, made you look into the blue, blue skies following some far off thought, made you rush through your listening skills and desperately wanting more of the story, then this one has checked all the boxes. I don't really believe in star ratings because every one reads, understands and perceives a read differently. Yet, I want to add 5 more stars to the existing 5 that currently exist.

Kate Quinn's research, story telling ability and prowess of turning a historical event into something that you would not forget for a long time is beyond excellence.

~Some beautiful lines to remember~

But something else went on at the same time war did, and that was life. It kept right on going up until the moment it stopped...

Why and if. The two most painful words in existence

The greatest tyrants over women are women...

When a girl has broken national security to ease your mind about your family’s lying in the path of an invasion route, she has officially become a friend.

Grief didn’t make you noble. It made you selfish and hateful.

How much she hated being a woman sometimes: underpaid and underestimated and betrayed by your own body.

I crack messages. I don’t interpret them. It doesn’t matter to me what I’m breaking. Why complicate things when there aren’t hardly enough hours in the day as is?

I don’t mind men who are shorter than me. I mind men who are touchy about being shorter than me.