On the evening of what would be known as Kristallnacht,
November 9th 1938, Marianne von Lingenfels is attending a
party at Castle von Lingenfels. Marianne's husband,
Albrecht, is attending as well as Marianne's oldest
friend Martin Constantine Fledermann, "Connie," who has
brought his much younger fiancée Benita. Connie and
Albrecht fear the worst for Germany, and are prepared to
fight Hitler. Connie ominously entrusts Marianne to take
care of Benita should anything happen to him. That's how
Benita came to live with Marianne in burg von Lingenfels,
and later Ania joined them as THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE.
I was excited at the theme of the book, as it is a
subject I know quite well, and this I'm afraid might have
worked against me. I did not expect to learn much, and
alas, I learned nothing new, which I wouldn't have
minded, had I been moved by the characters' stories,
which was not the case, and there are a few reasons for
this unfortunate turn of events. For me, the structure of
the book is a huge problem: most of the story takes place
between 1938 and 1945, then we go forward to 1950, then
back to 1923; and the latter fifth of the book, in 1991.
The latter part would have worked much better, in my
opinion, as a much shorter epilogue, as I felt much of it
was somewhat self-indulgent.
As I suspected, the author based her stories on interviews
with real people, and it
might have influenced the tone of the book, maybe to
preserve the anonymity of the sources or to distance herself
from her subjects. I found the going back and
forth exceedingly distracting, and some events would have
worked better had they been told prior to 1950; I also felt
that some backstories came too late in the book to
be of any interest at that point.
THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE is abundantly rich in period
details, however at times, overwhelmingly so. I found
Marianne wholly uninteresting; the character feels a bit
like a mouthpiece for what would be considered "a good
German", that is a German who wanted nothing to do with the
Nazis. Marianne espouses causes, yet she seems not to care
for the people affected by said causes, such as her
housemates Benita and Ania. The latter could have been
captivating characters, but it never took off. Some of that
caused by the back and forth again: as one character's life
began to look sort of interesting, we were whisked to
another time or event, and that was that; the momentum was
lost.
THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE reads more like a history of German
women during WWII and their woes, all tacked on Marianne,
Benita, and Ania. The tone of the book is dry, impersonal,
and detached, as if the author trying to remove herself from
emotional
involvement went too far and forgot to infuse life into her
characters. I didn't like Marianne, and the very few times
I got the impression of a person, she came off as a
sanctimonious do-gooder, and still I didn't feel she cared,
even though I was told she did. As for other characters,
there is one I might have liked had I been
given a chance, but the author turned her into "a bad guy".
While her backstory was interesting, again it came too late,
and gave way to a torrent of historical
details. Also, I couldn't grasp why some of Ania's story
was told in the present tense. The tone of the book is so
dispassionate, so cold, so devoid of emotion, I never
connected with any of the characters, I never felt involved
in their lives. In my humble opinion, THE WOMEN IN THE
CASTLE would have worked much better as straight
history, or as a memoir, even if names would have had to be
changed, or with composite characters.
THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE is beautifully written,
remarkably historically accurate, and richly detailed,
which makes it an excellent book if one is eager to learn
about German women's lives during the Second World War.
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.
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