Women in the Castle
Jessica Shattuck
373 pages
hard copy edition
From the publisher:
Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined—an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.
First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister’s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.
As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.
Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah’s Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck’s evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and, ultimately, to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.
Review:
I saw a friend reading this recently and she totally recommended it. I am a big fan of WWII historical novels so I knew she was right, that I would love it. I just feel like any review I write can’t adequately describe this story and the power that it depicts. There are so many WWII novels out there but not many from the German resisters. What an interesting perspective!
The three women all had strengths and faults and I felt were real. I didn’t have one character I loved more than the other, they each had things I loved and hated about them. They had each lost a husband in the war and each dealt with the war and their grief in different ways. It’s interesting to think about how one reacts to such horrible things going around you – do you join them, resist them, or just ignore them?
This novel is not for the faint of heart, it is not as graphic as other WWII books I have read, but there are real raw scenes that might be hard for a sensitive reader. It leaves you with a lot to think about and I think would make an excellent book club selection too.
Read a-likes for this novel are: All the Light We Cannot See, Lilac Girls or The Nightingale.
Leave me a comment and let me know if you’ve read this book! I would love to hear your thoughts!
