Rosalie KnechtReseñas

Part mid-century queer coming-of-age story, part spy novel about a CIA agent stationed in Argentina in lead-up to a coup. Who is Vera Kelly? isn't a bad book, but it's not one I found particularly compelling. The book's two timelines didn't play off one another in meaningful ways, and nothing really built to anything. Rosalie Knecht's prose is smooth and there were a couple of nice moments of character observation, but nothing that pushes me to seek out the second book in the series.

This wasn't quite what I expected, and it wasn't as much about a murder mystery with Vera doing amateur sleuthing or the like as it was about her being a gay woman in the 70s and navigating her life as a gay woman with a relationship with another woman who had a harder time with her family and them accepting her and her way of life.
This was about Vera and Max going to visit Max's parents, where there was chaos with her parents and their marriage ending. It was about whether and how Vera and Max were going to reveal themselves and their relationship to her parents, etc. This was also about how it was easier for them to just say they were friends and hide their relationship and true nature around certain people and in certain situations. It was also interesting yet strange to see the similarities and differences in how women and gays/homosexuality was viewed back then versus how it is now.
And once again, this story led to a woman being taken against her will and admitted into a hospital or mental institution of some sort for 'sick people. I've now read 3 or 4 books this year relating to history and women being put in mental institutions because of reasons that are not related to them being sick and needing to be in a hospital the way the hospitals described it back then.
I was a bit disappointed in this story as I was expecting something fun and great, like other amateur sleuth stories I've read. It was a decent read with some interesting things and a good storyline, but I feel like it should have been identified differently, perhaps as a light mystery with more historical fiction.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for letting me read and review this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

It was ok. Not really a thriller or mystery. Mostly about the difficulties of being gay in the 50s and 60s. Compelling, but not what I was really expecting.

Who is Vera Kelly? is almost two completely different, but interspersed stories, not meeting up until the final chapters in Brooklyn, NY.
The coming-of-age story starts in 1957 Maryland. Vera is despondent, her father is dead, her mother isn't interested and her best friend is gone.
The second story has Vera as a CIA consultant in Argentina.
Interesting concept, but I'm not certain that it worked.½

If you have read any previous entries for this blog or followed my profile on Goodreads, you will know I am a big fan of the publishing house Tin House. I enjoy what they publish because often I find myself thinking about the titles long after I have read them. The books tend to get better as they age in my brain.

This would definitely be one of those books. I will admit while reading this through the first time, I was not a big fan which was surprising. I loved Relief Map by Rosalie Knecht, but something was not clicking with me with Vera Kelly. When I finished it, I started it again knowing the end of the book and just read the first quarter of the book again. That is when it clicked for me.

Vera Kelly is a book about self discovery.

Throughout the book, we alternate between two time lines one is later in her life where she is on a mission to eavesdrop on a political conversation in Argentina which begins to turn ugly during the revolution. The second timeline is her younger years where she is shaped by time in juvie, she has sexual encounters, and becomes the person we see in the later years- an almost accidental spy.

This is a slower moving book for a spy novel and that, I believe, is where the disconnect came for me. When I read the blurb and it mentioned spy, my mind went to Bourne or Bond or Atomic Blonde, but this is not that. There are action sequences, but this is primarily a book about self discovery. How did this girl, now a woman wind up in this predicament after just wanting to live her life around gay bars and struggles with rent. How do we become the person we are today?

Once that epiphany happened- self discovery first and spy second, I began to churn this book a bit more in the brain and wound up enjoying it. I will not go so far as to say it is my favorite Tin House books and I still think Relief Map is a better read, but this one is worth a read through too. Just don't expect big action, cool gadgets, or explosions. This espionage in the truest sense as you spy into her life and watch her become the person she becomes.

I gave this one 3.5 stars.

*I want to thank NetGalley and Tin House for the advanced copy. I received it in exchange for an honest review.*

On a visit to Vera’s girlfriend Max’s family home, she discovers that Max’s father is really not happy with the direction that his daughter’s life has taken. When Vera wakes up the next day she finds that Max has disappeared. With no help from the family and just a confusing telephone message to go on, Vera sets out to track down Max in her own inimitable way

This is book 3 in the Vera Kelly series but is the first one that I’ve read. It works perfectly well as a stand-alone novel as anything you need to know from the previous tales is slipped in whenever it is needed.

The main characters are well defined and ably supported by a small collection of quirky secondary ones that keep it all interesting.

The plot starts slowly but picks up speed following Max’s disappearance and then races to its frantic conclusion as Max’s investigations lead her to a family conspiracy designed to keep her apart from her true love.

What a great read. Vera had a troubled childhood but that makes her a resourceful person. She’s working for the CIA in Argentina right before the 1966 coup. The intertwining of these two stories works very well. I didn’t wa t to put the book down. I will read the other two Vera Kelly books.½

Looking back from 2022, it's surprising how much has changed...and how much has stayed the same.. for same-sex couples since the 1970s. Vera Kelly's girlfriend was disowned by her wealthy family, only to be called back home by her younger sister in response to her parents' pending divorce. Vera must face their outright hostility and track down Max when she mysteriously disappears early one morning. It's always great fun to see Vera use her wits to solve problems and the period touches are perfect (a paper ticket for a Pan Am flight? shoes for $3.99?). Enjoy!

Thanks to Tin House for access to a digital ARC via NetGalley.

Ex-CIA agent Vera Kelly is back for a second book, in which she becomes a private detective. Read my full review here.

A spy novel based on real events (Falklands conflict), with the narrator as a CIA recruit in the mid '60s, a gay woman who has been abused by her mother. The resolution works very well, but I'm not invested enough to continue to the next two novels. Espionage just isn't my thing.

A middling CIA thriller. Vera Kelly's mother had her arrested as a teenager for 'stealing' her car. That led to a special school and bad familial relations. Upon graduation, Vera moved from Maryland to New York City and worked a variety of jobs. One job was at a radio station where she learned to fix the equipment.

Apparently it was a hangout for CIA operatives and soon Vera is recruited, given a new identity as Anne and shipped off to Argentina in the early 1960s. Argentina was in chaos with a weak leader and was ripe for a military overthrow. The US was concerned the KGB might get a grip there.

The book jumps back and forth between Vera's childhood in the 1950s and her time in Argentina in the mid 1960s.

Who is Vera Kelly is readable but not engrossing. It was recommended by Jane Pel. aiuthor of The Verifiers. Unfortunately it was not as good as The Verifiers. Maybe books 2 and 3 in the Vera Kelly series are better, but I'm probably never going to find out.

I'm pulling the ol' "there should be half-stars on Goodreads--I'm rouding up." Who Is Vera Kelly? is a solid 3.5 if only due to its snail's pace for the first half of the novel. The writing makes up for it--I loved the 1960s Argentina and Vera's 1950s queer coming-of-age in Chevy Chase and NYC. I wasn't always terribly sure who was doing what and why, and the characterization of the other characters seemed a little sparse, but it all kind of worked out anyway in the spy novel aspect (not that I've read many...or any?). I loved Vera from the beginning and was invested in whatever she was doing, no matter the time. I want to follow her into other novels, but this is a standalone so I ought to be happy with what I got. I would love to read more novels like this. It was fun.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for the advanced copy of this book.

After a turbulent youth, the break-up with her mom, some time in a detention centre and no plan what to do with her life, Vera ends up in New York, trying this job and that job. One day, she is addressed by a man who noticed her quick wits and technical understanding. He is a recruiter for the CIA and thus, a couple of years later, Vera finds herself in Buenos Aires with the fake ID of a Canadian student named Anne. Her mission: spy on a group of students who the CIA believes to work for the KGB in order to ally Argentina with the Soviet Union. Vera/Anne makes befriends Ramón and Victoria who have radicalised and are disappointed by how the country is governed. Yet, then suddenly, the military ventures a coup d’état and General Onganía’s men take over. Vera/Anne is stuck, foreigners are not allowed to travel anymore, her local contact betrayed her and she gets the runaround by her superior within the CIA. Either she acts for herself, or she is lost.

“Who Is Vera Kelly?” is not an easy to classify novel. It is a kind of bildungsroman, we get to know young Vera who protests against her mother and school and has to grow up the hard way. A young woman who is looking for her place in life and oscillates between different options without a clear aim. On the other hand, the novel is a political or spy crime novel since we have Vera/Anne prying on rebellious students to uncover any KGB involvement in Argentina and also the time after the Revolución which brings the military dictatorship and severe restrictions for the people.

At both times of her life, Vera is lonely, her affection for her school friend is not returned and also when she arrives in New York does she not find a person to really bond with. This qualifies for a lone spy job abroad where she is left to her own devices and cannot really build deep friendships. The experiences she made as a teenager, especially with her mother who kicked her out into the detention centre and did not show any interest in her, gave her quite a good education for her mission.

Vera is not a classic heroine, she is no James Bond and does not compare to any other dazzling movie character. She is actually the perfect spy, she blends in smoothly, goes unnoticed and her technical skills allow her even without any sophisticated equipment to get the information she needs. When she finds herself deserted of all contacts and help, she is close to breaking down but then shows her real strength. She just goes on and finds a solution to escape.

A perfect blend of a young woman who is far ahead of her time in terms of emancipation and going her own way and a world in political turmoil. The plot becomes increasingly suspenseful and thus is a real page-turner.

A small town with big secrets story that is full of suspense & tension that has kept me reading. What a debut!

A small town with big secrets story that is full of suspense & tension that has kept me reading. What a debut!

Continuing on from Who is Vera Kelly, the reader will find the former CIA agent dealing with her new job as a private investigator and romance. Its also a look at what being queer was like in the 1960’s. Vera been hired to track down the missing great-nephew, the son of well-to-Dominicans. Vera is a PI like I’ve never met before and I look forward to more in the series.

I slid straight into "Who Is Vera Kelly?", carried along not by the pace of the plot, which is not the usual you-have-twenty-four-hours- to-save-the-world spy thriller pace but by the nuanced but unpretentious prose and by the clear, calm way in which Vera describes herself and her situation.

We meet two Veras in the book - the 1957 not-quite-eighteen Vera, in emotional distress and heading towards juvie and 1966 twenty-six going on twenty-seven Vera who works for the CIA undercover in Argentina collecting covert surveillance material on politicians and dissidents.

I liked the fact that neither Vera discusses the other. Both are fully occupied by their present. There is no clumsy forboding or regretful reminiscence, just life as it happens.

What links the two Veras is a deep awareness of their isolation and their inability to live an authentic life without running the risk of being punished for their sexual orientation.

I enjoyed anticipating the slow reveal that would let me see how the 1957 Vera, in love with her best friend, in conflict with her mother and locked away by the authorities became 1966 Vera, working for a CIA that has a policy of not knowingly employing gay people because of the risk of blackmail.

Vera's narrative about her teenage life has the stunned quiet of shock and dislocation about it that comes from being a teenager dealing with emotions that are larger than you are, when you have no experience to guide you and no power to protect yourself.

One of my favourite passages in the book is seventeen-year-old Vera's description of how she feels about Joanne, the girl she loves, in which she recognises her own inability to look at herself and her emotions directly or set them in context but in which she is able to express their power:

"When I thought of Joanne I could do never do better than a kind of wounded evasion of my romantic feelings for her.

I pretended that I was like one of the great ladies of the nineteenth century who sent each other genteel letters when they were apart about how desperately they missed each other. When we read those letters in history classes, or came across that kind of talk in books, our teachers would explain that what read like passion was just the natural affinity of women for each other andthere was nothing out of the way about it at all.

Joanne had been my favourite person in the world and when she hugged me and her face pressed against my neck I felt a fizzing, nauseous thrill from the pit of my stomach to the bones of my feet. That was all I knew about it and all I could have told anyone if anyone had asked."

Vera's narrative about her time undercover in Buenos Aires is tense in a way that speaks to fear long lived with rather than an adrenalin rush. She habitually and skillfully hides who she is. She is alone, reaching for detachment and finding first panic and then determination and courage. The tension is handled in a low-key way that builds pressure at an inexorable pace that feels like a slow-motion car-crash in which Vera is in the passenger seat.


One of the things I found most engaging about Vera is how clearly she expresses what she sees. Her interior dialogue is nuanced and rich. Here's an example of her reaction to something as she walks through the pre-dawn streets of Buenos Aires as a coupe d'êtat takes place:

"I passed a nightclub with the doors propped open, young people streaming out into the street. I was startled by the intrusion of raucous nighttime into this quiet dawn moment."

As things got worse in Buenos Aires I kept asking myself why Vera had chosen to put herself at risk by going under-cover in a foreign land. I could see no driving idealism or fervent patriotism or even thrill-seeking to explain the choice. As the story unfolded and I started to get an answer to the question, "Who Is Vera Kelly?" I began to understand that Vera's situation in Buenos Aires is only an amplification of her life in the US. Vera has been living under-cover her whole life. It seemed to me that her situation also gave Vera a legitimate reason for watching and manipulating people while remaining distant and hiding who she is.


This feeling was reinforced when Vera finally talks about her relationship with her first-love, Joanne. She Says:

"Joanne was the last person who could look at me and see me looking back. Who could put out her hand and find me there. I wouldn't let it be so easy again."

"Who Is Vera Kelly?" is an accessible, easy-to-read book but that doesn't mean it's a simple one. Part of my pleasure in reading the book came from the way in which the novel uses the spy genre to demonstrate what it's like to live in an environment so hostile to your sexual orientation that you dare not admit to being who you are and the consequential stress, isolation and blurring of identity.

I listened to the audiobook edition, which is narrated with great skill by Elisabeth Rodgers, You can hear a sample of her narration of "Who Is Vera Kelly?" by clicking on the SoundCloud link below.

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I'd like to talk with someone that's read this book about their impression of it.

2 1/2 stars, rounded up. The word that comes to mind when I think about this novel is 'competent'. The author's has an unfussy way with description that I really like, and that's what kept me going, along with the fact that I was reading for a group read. Otherwise, this was an interesting story that never dove below the surface of the characters or the plot. The only character who had an interior life is Vera, and I felt like she had the appropriate textbook responses to formative events in her life, but her feelings never came alive for me. She's not the kind of character to navel gaze, I get that, but still, I felt like she was a mediocre actress playing the role - she didn't bring it to life. The coup in Argentina and the presence of a CIA spy were simply plot devices with no larger meaning outside the plot. I think that this book was meant to be a quick read and not a deep meditation, but it needed to go a little deeper.

This paperback has one of the best covers--both front and back--I've seen in a while. It's well-designed, eye-catching, and conveys exactly what the book is like. Designer Jakob Vala is really good.

I'd never heard of Tin House Books before, but I'm already fond of them. They seem to be a small independent publisher that likes new authors, quirky books, and risky publishing decisions. What's not to like?

"Who Is Vera Kelly" is a quick, easy read that gets better as it goes along. Author Rosalie Knecht deftly handles switching back and forth between time lines, and the writing is direct and clean. Best of all, there are a lot of original touches-- characters and plot twists that depart from the norm. Fun.

BTW, a new author photo would be nice. She looks like an abandoned waif. And she doesn't write like one. (I know. Everybody's a critic.)

What a treat this book was, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Vera Kelly is a great character, I liked her immensely!

i mostly enjoyed this novel... though i did it a bit of a disservice reading it in my current state. my concentration and focus have not been great and i found the non-linear timeline–which i am usually totally fine with–a bit clunky for my brain. but that is my fault, not at all anything to do with the author or story!! knecht is a good writer and this was a compellingly different approach to the noir genre.½

Here’s a wonderful new spy, one who makes her presence known in the mid-60’s Buenos Aires during the season of coups. She’s CIA, and her role becomes much more challenging than she expects, including a hair-raising escape. I hope to see Vera leave her retirement and come back for more intrigue.

This is the gay lady spy novel of my dreams.