Collect The Other Typist Sketched By Suzanne Rindell Disseminated As Script

it's difficult to believe this is a debut novel, I had to keep checking to be sure, It is so well written, Set during the roarings during the Prohibition, it tells the story of two typists, Rose and Odalie, who work at a New York City police precinct.
But thats just the beginning, . . this is a real page turner of a psychological thriller with varied, interesting and memorable characters, characters both within and external to the precinct.
But it is the unreliable narrator, Rose, who makes this book what it is and as far as unreliable narrators go, she is definitely one of the best that I have read to date.
As much as I loved this book and really wanted to award it a full five, there were a couple of reasons why I didnt.
One was the use of foreshadowing, a technique which I really love, but on this occasion, I think that it may have been overused and therefore didnt entirely compliment the ending.
That said, this is a riveting read that you will find difficult to put down, You will be wondering about the truth of the story and trying to work it all out again in your mind, long after you have read it.
I will be waiting eagerly and impatiently for more from this author, I still cant believe its a debut! sitelink
"I recognized something was happening the very second she walked in the door for her interview.
On that particular day, she entered very calmly and quietly, but I knew: It was like

the eye of a hurricane, She was the dark epicenter of something we didnt quite understand yet, the place where hot and cold mixed dangerously, and around her everything would change.
"

Odalie/Rose, . . whoever she is has got me in an uncomfortable position, I don't know whether I just liked or loved this book, I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who was totally confused by the ending, Open endings don't always make me a disgruntled reader, but in this case it can make the time you invested in the novel utterly pointless.


What wasn't pointless was the world building Rindell created, For the moments I would open this book, I felt like I was transported to the dark, glittering nights amidst the speakeasies ofs New York.
I loved the descriptions of opulence, clothing and style, and all the details! I feel like that was this novel's saving grace, I just might jump into Rindell's second novel, sitelinkThreeMartini Lunch to prolong the high,
The combination of Suzanne Rindell's impeccable storytelling technique, plus the perfectly understated and prim voice of her narrator, Rose Baker typist/transcriptionist for criminal confessions at a police department in, plus a riveting story make The Other Typist irresistible and unputdownable.
And I think I would feel this even if I'd never worked as a typist and deposition transcriptionist,

However I did, So, boy, was this book fun, Rindell spills the big secrets of the job: how intimate is the act of hearing deposition testimony, how much the transcriptionist observes and understands about people that they believe they are hiding, and finally that the transcriptionist is anything but an automaton and actually can effect the understood truth.
I will not elaborate for fear of committing a spoiler and selfincrimination, The only thing in this book that made me cock my head with disbelief was the claim that Rose typeswords per minute on a manual typewriter I was considered a speed demon attowords per minute on an IBM Selectric.


The story luxuriates in the era of speakeasies and flappers, and the community of conscious poseurs and compulsive sociopaths is both beguiling and relevant to our human propensity to "perform" with a remarkable obliviousness to our transparency.
The Other Typist is an absolute joy to read, and in my reader/writer's opinion, Rindell is victorious in her wish to "pay deliberate homage to the first true love of her teenage years: Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
" Read this book. You are in for a treat,
The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell may be the most riveting pageturner that I have read this year, I was hooked on chapter one and barely came up for air, It is so wellwritten and consuming that it felt almost like an addiction,

The story is about a typist in a lower east side, New York, police precinct by the name of Rose Baker, Things are going fine where she works and she is a very quick and accurate typist, After the prohibition acts ofwere passed, more people got busted and thrown in the cell and that required more paperwork, Thus, a new typist was hired, Odalie Lazarre, From the minute that Odalie walks into the precinct, Roses life is not the same,

Rose was brought up in an orphanage run by nuns, She lives in a rooming house, sharing a room with a woman she despises, The room is made into two separate living spaces by hanging a sheet between them, Rose appears to have no sense of humor, She is literal, intense and everything is black and white for her, Odalie is the opposite. She is light, flighty, flirty, and sees things in shades of gray, Rose becomes obsessed with Odalie, to the point of keeping a journal of her daily observations of her, On the first day of work, Odalie accidentally drops a brooch on the floor, Rose picks it up and instead of returning it to Odalie, she puts it in the back of her desk drawer, She can caress it, view it, and it symbolizes Odalie to her,

As Rose keeps getting more and more drawn into Odalies world, her sense of self diminishes, Odalies world is a fantastical one, filled with lies and made up stories, Who Odalie is and where she came from is a mystery, one that changes with each new set of circumstances,

As Rose and Odalies friendship evolves, we know that Rose is in for a fall, She hints about the doctor she is seeing, the institution she is now in, What this fall is, we will not know until the end of the book, but the astute reader can see how Rose is being set up and used.


I loved the book but had trouble suspending belief for the ending, It just seemed too out there and beyond my abilities to accept, Other than that, I can hardly believe this is a debut novel, Ms. Rindell writes like a pro and her language is lovely and flowing, I can hardly wait for her next piece of writing,
Confessions are Rose Bakers job, A typist for the New York City Police Department, she sits in judgment like a high priestess, Criminals come before her to admit their transgressions, and, with a few strokes of the keys before her, she seals their fate, But while she may hear about shootings, knifings, and crimes of passion, as soon as she leaves the room, she reverts to a dignified and proper lady.
Until Odalie joins the typing pool,

As Rose quickly falls under the stylish, coquettish Odalies spell, she is lured into a sparkling underworld of speakeasies and jazz, And what starts as simple fascination turns into an obsession from which she may never recover,.stars

Well, I feel like I need a cigarette and a martini,

What to say about this book It's such a mindfuck that it's hard to piece together, and I'm not certain that the story or the ending actually makes sense.


Set in the mids in New York during the Prohibition, the novel follows Rose the narrator who becomes obsessed perhaps sexually with another typist at work: the beautiful, charming, alluring, mysterious Odalie.


Rose and Odalie are typists at a New York police station, They take down confessions and transcribe various notes, As Rose and Odalie grow closer, Rose realizes that Odalie is involved is some unsavory activities having to do with bootlegging, She also realizes she has no idea which of Odalie's stories about her past is true, or if any of them are, Who is Odalie Where does she get her money Where does she come from A summer outing to a Gatsbylike mansion outside of the city pushes Rose and Odalie into a jarring meeting with someone from the past.


This was such an odd book, well written but overstyled and too heavy on the exposition and internal monologue,

There's also a LOT of foreshadowing, and I mean a lot, It's not subtle. It sort of hits you over the head a few times, Rindell uses phrases such as "Had I known then what I know now," "Oh, how little I really knew," "You may think me naive, but.
" and so on, ad nauseum,

We realize early on that Rose is a naive narrator, and again this particular construct is not in the least bit subtle.
We don't discover that we've been duped we anticipate being duped, We also know that something bad will happen at the end, and the whole book is filled with tension leading up to this climax.
Except the climax is not a great surprise, and the ending, while weirdly delicious, isn't really believable,

For a twist to have an aha moment of total clarity, I think we need to be able to trace the story and see the clues along the way so that the conclusion makes sense you know how at the end of The Sixth Sense, you're like, holy crap, he's dead, he's totally dead, of course he is.
Well, this isn't like that, Maybe the ambiguity is the point, but I found it strangely jarring yet not completely satisfying, But, hell, at least it made me think, .