The women in the castle review năm 2024

World War II has inspired dozens of unforgettable novels, but Jessica Shattuck offers a mesmerizing new look at the aftermath of the war in The Women in the Castle (William Morrow, 356 pp., ***½ out of four stars).

The fictional Marianne von Lingenfels is a widow of the German Resistance. After failing to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944, her husband Albrecht and his friend Martin Constantine Fledermann (known as Connie) are hanged; their deaths, the result of a real-life plot against the Fuhrer, set the novel’s events in motion.

As Germany is slowly wrested from the Nazis’ grip, the formidable Marianne pries Connie’s toddler son from a cruel German orphanage and rescues Connie’s comely young widow, Benita, from an occupying Russian soldier who holds her captive.

An American soldier alerts Marianne to another widow, Ania, just freed with her sons from a camp for displaced persons. The women make a home for their fatherless boys in the castle Marianne inherited from Albrecht that once hosted Germany’s finest.

In vivid flashbacks, Shattuck reveals the wartime anguish all three women endured. But peacetime has its own tortures, as neighbors who were once Nazis make an uneasy return to post-war life.

Stoic, hard-working Ania is the most compelling of the three women. Her sullen sons are hard workers but cast a troubling pall on the castle. Benita, who wed and was widowed young, soon connects with a German prisoner who has been released to help Marianne maintain the castle grounds. But the self-righteous, manipulative Marianne is horrified that Benita — widow of a Resistance hero — could be attracted to Herr Muller, who, like many Germans, was a Nazi.

Marianne’s strength and resilience get her through the war and its brutal aftermath, but her narrow-mindedness has harsh consequences for those she loves. Shattuck’s observations of Germans returning to post-war routines are stinging: “The townspeople … fished and washed in the river and walked alongside it in the evenings. No one spoke of the prisoners they had watched stumble and die along its banks.”

Survivors do what they must to carry on, but all three women are haunted by the choices they made during the war. Shattuck was inspired to write the book by her shame over her German heritage, and the wartime era’s links to contemporary political issues.

Her book answers the question “How do good people become Nazis?” with insight and empathy. The Women in the Castle stands tall among the literature that reveals new truths about one of history’s most tragic eras.

How they rec­on­cile their very dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, oppor­tu­ni­ties for sur­vival, and over­ar­ch­ing sen­si­bil­i­ties and world­views is one of the major dri­ving forces of the nov­el. We see the women grap­ple with pri­vate wounds and painful secrets, each respond­ing in her own way to the pres­sures of liv­ing under fas­cist rule. Shattuck’s deep and dark his­tor­i­cal imag­i­na­tion takes the read­er on a jour­ney of sur­pris­ing twists and turns, into a sub­tle explo­ration of a war-haunt­ed com­mu­ni­ty where lives can be rebuilt, but only with one another’s help.

At its core, the book rais­es anew an old ques­tion: how did good peo­ple become Nazis? It seeks to find answers that con­tain suf­fi­cient insight and empa­thy to sat­is­fy the book’s read­ers, Jew and gen­tile alike. In so doing, the book joins a rel­a­tive­ly new sub­genre of fic­tion that includes the pop­u­lar book The Nightin­gale by Kristin Han­nah, and its more lit­er­ary pre­cur­sor Stones from the Riv­er by Ursu­la Hegi, both of which show the effects of the war on ​“ordi­nary” Ger­mans, with the goal of illu­mi­nat­ing shared suf­fer­ing. These books employ a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive than the one more com­mon­ly found in Holo­caust lit­er­a­ture that focus­es on the lives of Jew­ish victims.

Shat­tuck exhibits excel­lent sto­ry­telling skills and allows fine­ly embroi­dered emo­tion­al truth to col­or this book with grace, imbu­ing it with a sat­is­fy­ing sense of real­i­ty. We come to under­stand not just the peo­ple but the cir­cum­stances that shad­ed their choic­es and brought them to their destinies.

It must be said up front that Jessica Shattuck is a genius at character development and narrative description.

Her recent novel, The Women in the Castle tells of the relationship between three women, each of whom suffers loss and tragedy during and after World War II. It’s a story of secrets that are held in for decades—secrets that affect relationships.

The story begins at the castle Burg Lingenfels, in Germany, in November 1938. Marianne von Lingenfels acts as hostess to the annual harvest party, thrown by the countess, the aunt of her husband, Albrecht.

The affair opens as talk of war swirls, and a small group of resisters, led by Albrecht and Marianne’s childhood friend, Martin Constantine (Connie) Fledermann meet. The discussion unfolds around an assassination plot designed to eliminate Adolph Hitler.

Both Albrecht and Connie make Marianne promise that should anything go wrong, she must take care of the wives left behind. It is at this time that Connie confides in Marianne that he is to be married to Benita, a German girl much younger than he.

The story moves forward to 1945—the war has ended and the assassination attempt has failed. Albrecht and Connie are both executed for their roles in the plot, leaving Marianne to hold true to her obligation to the two important men in her life.

Marianne searches and finds Connie’s son, Martin, in a youth camp. He has been taken from Benita after Connie’s execution, and it becomes Marianne’s lot to find him and his mother and reunite them. Benita is found in squalid surroundings where Russian soldiers have repeatedly raped her. Mother and son are brought together and returned to Burg Lingenfels.

The third party to this reunion is Ania Grabarek, a war widow with two young sons. She brings her homemaking skills to the group, and an uneasy alliance is formed.

The story continues to unfold in a sometimes awkward movement of backstory and forward story. There is no chronological movement and there are times when this takes a few moments of concentration to understand where we are in the story.

And yet, this works. Most probably because of Shattuck’s strength in the areas of designing her characters through strong narrative and description that brings all five senses together to create vivid pictures of people, places, and actions.

Her description of the chaos of war conveys the anxiety and turmoil just short of madness that her characters experienced. The visuals placed before the reader are at times difficult to comprehend, yet Shattuck’s command of the language makes it difficult to put the book down.

There is little plot to the story—yet the character of each woman is given full attention. Her history defines her personality. Marianne is driven to meet her obligation to Albrecht and Connie, and in doing so, she is at times caring, at other times overbearing and manipulative.

Benita is a dreamer—a woman who grew up in a family lacking in familial love. Her dream to escape is initially met through her marriage to Connie and her almost overbearing love for her son, Martin. That dream shatters as the war separates her from Martin, and comes to a screeching halt that finds her in a brothel, satisfying the sexual needs of Russian soldiers. That is, until Marianne finds her and reunites her with Martin.

Again, through forward and backward movement, Benita’s personality is developed and through the story she becomes and remains a somewhat put-upon, pitiful character whose dreams of happiness never materialize.

Ania Grabarek is a widow who joins the small group. A realist, yet not an overt one, she brings with her two sons. As life at the castle progresses, she meets and marries a local farmer, older than she. The realist in her convinces her that this alliance will ultimately benefit her sons who will inherit the farm when her husband dies.

But nothing during this period is comfortable, and her life takes a turn when her first husband appears, ill and not long for the world. Ania, the realist, takes the action needed to rectify the situation.

These three women, each with a story to tell, are moved by Shattuck into the late 20th century, long after the end of the war—a war that remains uncomfortably with each woman.

Secrets are exposed as the story winds down, and forgiveness makes its appearance through memories and truth.

Although the opening of the book proves slow to get into, Shattuck’s writing and delivery quickly bring the reader into the characters and the problems each faces as they cope with the end of the war and the direction their lives are taking.

Is The Women in the Castle Based on a true story?

Jessica Shattuck's novel The Women in the Castle is a work of historical fiction so some aspects of the novel are based on facts. While the novel's main characters are fictional, Shattuck's depiction of post-war Germany and the persecution of Hitler's conspirators is accurate.

What is the summary of the women in the castle?

Plot Summary. Set during the Second World War, American author Jessica Shattuck's historical novel The Women in the Castle (2017) follows three women—the widows of men killed in a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler—as they cope with the devastation of their country and the collective guilt of the German people.

What is the girl in the castle about?

1347: Hannah Dory and her village are starving to death in a brutal winter. Hannah seeks out food and salvation in the baron's castle. If she is caught stealing, she will surely hang. NOW: Hannah knows the truth: she is Hannah Doe and Hannah Dory, and she must return to the past before it's too late to save her sister.

What is the book about three women in a castle?

"The Women in the Castle" by Jessica Shattuck showcases three women who find difficulty coming to terms with their individual guilt and shame during World War II. The secrets they keep prevent healing from personal trauma and overall crimes against humanity.