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A review by kayleepopovich
The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
3.0
This novel was not what I thought it was going to be. Me and my 21st century values went into it thinking that it would be an uplifting tale of a rare display of heroic feminism in one of the darkest periods in world history, and while this was partly the case, it was more of a depressing than that. Not that I expected a work of historical fiction set in WWII to be cheery and sugar-coated, but I figured it would be more a story of how these women picked up the pieces of their lives and helped the others do the same--not how they all one by one fell apart until the novel reaches its resolution, ending with a description of a character that was as irrelevant as she was a uniting principle.
It wasn't until Ania's story started to take shape that I became more engaged with the book. She was a complicated figure but an important one, probably because her story is quite similar to many others who actually lived during that time. The way she followed Hitler's rhetoric because such a vibrant and promising orator seemed like a beacon of light after the devastation of Germany post-WWI; the way it became clear to her much later on that something infinitely more sinister and deceptive was happening, despite what she was being told to believe; and the way she kept most of this hidden and acknowledges the past without actually full on facing it, except to be regretful and self-deprecating towards the end of her life. While Marianne's and Benita's stories were interesting, I felt that Ania's character was a bit of a dark horse in that she didn't seem that interesting until, all at once, she was one of the most important figures in the novel.
Marianne and Benita were obviously intended to be foils to one another, but I felt that the dynamic of this specific relationship could have been better explored. And while Benita's suicide is a fitting resolution to the estranged friendship of Benita and Marianne, I felt it uncharacteristic to Benita herself. Her defining virtue was her love for her son, Martin, and if this love had really been as unwavering as the reader was led to believe, there should have been at the very least a better explanation of this component of Benita's life before she killed herself. More accurate to her character is that this love should have been the thing that saved her and kept her from killing herself.
There is more to the novel than what I have written here, but these were the main things on my mind as a finish this story.
side note: the story was assembled in a way similar to other historical novels, where it is set in one period of time (WWII) and then jumps very far ahead into the future when life has come and nearly gone (early 1990s). I am not so much a fan of this kind of timeline. I think that works of historical fiction are more credible and better received if placed only at one point in time. While I understand that jumping the action forward and trying to relate it to contemporary society is a way for readers to relate themselves to the story, the human condition will be the same regardless of when the novel is set. We don't have to see the action unfold in the 1990s to realize that the love, loss, regret, grief, longing, morals, and values experienced by these characters during WWII will most definitely feel the same to us today as they did then. Maybe that is a short-sighted critique, but sometimes a story told in a snapshot of one period of time is most impactful.
It wasn't until Ania's story started to take shape that I became more engaged with the book. She was a complicated figure but an important one, probably because her story is quite similar to many others who actually lived during that time. The way she followed Hitler's rhetoric because such a vibrant and promising orator seemed like a beacon of light after the devastation of Germany post-WWI; the way it became clear to her much later on that something infinitely more sinister and deceptive was happening, despite what she was being told to believe; and the way she kept most of this hidden and acknowledges the past without actually full on facing it, except to be regretful and self-deprecating towards the end of her life. While Marianne's and Benita's stories were interesting, I felt that Ania's character was a bit of a dark horse in that she didn't seem that interesting until, all at once, she was one of the most important figures in the novel.
Marianne and Benita were obviously intended to be foils to one another, but I felt that the dynamic of this specific relationship could have been better explored. And while Benita's suicide is a fitting resolution to the estranged friendship of Benita and Marianne, I felt it uncharacteristic to Benita herself. Her defining virtue was her love for her son, Martin, and if this love had really been as unwavering as the reader was led to believe, there should have been at the very least a better explanation of this component of Benita's life before she killed herself. More accurate to her character is that this love should have been the thing that saved her and kept her from killing herself.
There is more to the novel than what I have written here, but these were the main things on my mind as a finish this story.
side note: the story was assembled in a way similar to other historical novels, where it is set in one period of time (WWII) and then jumps very far ahead into the future when life has come and nearly gone (early 1990s). I am not so much a fan of this kind of timeline. I think that works of historical fiction are more credible and better received if placed only at one point in time. While I understand that jumping the action forward and trying to relate it to contemporary society is a way for readers to relate themselves to the story, the human condition will be the same regardless of when the novel is set. We don't have to see the action unfold in the 1990s to realize that the love, loss, regret, grief, longing, morals, and values experienced by these characters during WWII will most definitely feel the same to us today as they did then. Maybe that is a short-sighted critique, but sometimes a story told in a snapshot of one period of time is most impactful.