The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • More Books
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Privacy Policy

The Women in the Castle

April 21, 2017

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
Published by William Morrow
Publication date: March 28th 2017
Genres: Fiction, Historical
two-half-stars

women

 

At a German estate in 1938 a summer party turns serious when a group of men discuss their determination to stop Hitler from his ascent to power.  Marianne von Lingenfels is the wife of the group’s leader and she makes a promise to take care of the wives and children of the men in the group if they die in their efforts to stop Hitler. They do fail in their assassination attempt and are executed. In The Women in the Castle, after the war has ended with Germany’s brutal defeat, Marianne tries to make good on this commitment, even though the bucolic life they once knew is now in ashes. Despite knowing only one of the women, she finds her and another one and brings both and their children back to her husband’s castle to try and repair their lives and move forward.

Marianne’s herculean efforts lead her to Benita, the wife of a childhood friend; their little boy and another woman, Ania and her two sons. Suddenly, three women who don’t know each other or how they’ve spent the war are sharing a ruined castle with five children. If their current lives are harrowing—a constant parade of refugees and POWs trying to get home, little to no livestock, crops or money and no protection from enemies—it is nothing compared to their lives during the war. Benita’s son is taken from her and she is forced into sexual slavery by the Russians. Ania’s story has twisted long before the war’s end because her past is not as it appears nor is it past.

Interestingly, the nuance Shattuck gives her women is both the novel’s greatest strength and its weakness.  The Women in the Castle is not a straightforward story of heroines or villains, but something more complicated and therefore, intriguing. Benita and Ania elicit a variety of emotions from their lives, but although Marianne is at the literal and moral center of the novel, she is the most one-note character. Her determination for justice and her belief in the ideals of the resistance are laudable, but she’s had the most sheltered existence of any of them and as the novel progresses she allows judgment to override compassion and friendship. Benita later realizes this

Marianne, who had once seemed so intimidatingly wise, was in fact ignorant. She was her own kind of dreamer, a blind mathematician skating along the thin surface of life, believing in the saving power of logic, reason and information, overlooking the whole murky expanse of feeling and animal instinct that was the real driver of human, behavior, the real author of history.

The lack of dimension in Marianne puts me off The Women in the Castle, but not to the point of dismissing it completely. It holds the novel back, but beyond that Shattuck finds a fresh perspective on this most-written-about war.

 

p.s. The Women in the Castle is one more of the pieces of historical fiction I’ve read this year that has felt frighteningly similar to American politics now. If I didn’t know Shattuck had been writing the novel for ten years, I’d say it was a thinly veiled comparison between Hitler’s insidious takeover of Germany and its disastrous consequences with Trump and his advisors and their plans for America. Just sayin’.

two-half-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 2.5 Star Books
comfort reading
Comfort Reading
The Engagements
The Engagements
october
October Under-the-Radar Reads
anatomy lesson
The Anatomy Lesson
News of the World
Bridget Jones mad about the boy
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
only
The Only Woman in the Room
lion seeker
The Lion Seeker
Note to Self
Note to Self
eight
The Most Fun We Ever Had: A Novel
almost
Almost, But Not Quite: Mini-Reviews
it's
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
Fear of Dying: A Novel
august
August Reading Wrap-Up
a window opens
A Window Opens

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Germany, historical fiction, William Morrow, WWII

Comments

  1. Sarah's Book Shelves says

    April 21, 2017 at 4:39 am

    So you know how I feel about WWII novels in general, but I have this one on hold at the library anyway (mostly b/c I get tons of recommendations requests for this type of historical fiction and I don’t read that much of it!). But, your review definitely makes me nervous! I didn’t know you’d read this one!

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      April 21, 2017 at 9:26 am

      Honestly, I’d recommend All the Light before this one. It was not one of my favorites.

      Reply
  2. Susie | Novel Visits says

    April 21, 2017 at 4:28 pm

    I so agree with you, Catherine, on the comparisons to today’s political climate. I thought the very thing as I was reading The Women. Your review is spot on and similar to mine! There are a lot of fantastic books on WWII. This one does not rise to the top!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Indiebound and Amazon. If you click on a link that takes you to any of these sites and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2021

Copyright © 2021 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in