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elisabeth_julia 's review for:
The Women in the Castle
by Jessica Shattuck
The Women in the Castle is a historical fiction novel set in Germany during and directly after the Second World War. It is about three German women who live together in a fictional castle after the war. What connects them is that their husbands have died in the resistance against Hitler. However, it becomes clear during the course of the novel that there are more facets to these women than just being the widows of resisters.
The novel addresses the individual experience of German civilians during the war, their moral choices and conscience and how to deal with their “German guilt”.
I deeply appreciated the attempt to tell a World War Two story from the perspective of German female civilians. I haven’t seen or read anything from that perspective yet and I wish there was more on that topic.
In the acknowledgements the author expresses her thanks to Germans she has interviewed, which means that she must have had some foundation there on which to base her book on. Even so, The Women in the Castle had a distinct inauthentic feeling to me as a German. There were sentences like “I could eat five schnitzels right now”, which just made me cringe. The setting to me didn’t feel authentic in general. There were too many subtleties the author didn’t seem to be aware of. I wonder if Jessica Shattuck ever spent some actual time in Germany for her book. Or did she just eat Schnitzel there? I think I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if I weren’t German and didn’t notice the discrepancies. They are not obvious but the book just never felt quite “right”.
To be honest, the whole book never felt quite right to me. As much as I enjoyed the stories of the three women in the castle, I could never get invested in the characters or the overall story. The Women in the Castle took me a long time to read because it kept dragging on right from the beginning up to the very last page.
The message the novel tries to convey is incredibly important, yet it lacks impact. I felt left wanting more from the Women in the Castle.
Like mentioned above, I appreciated the concept and the different perspective this book takes on. However, the execution is lacklustre. If it wasn’t for the unique perspective, The Women in the Castle would only have been a 2-star read for me. Unfortunately, The Women in the Castle was one of the more disappointing books I have read this year so far.
The novel addresses the individual experience of German civilians during the war, their moral choices and conscience and how to deal with their “German guilt”.
I deeply appreciated the attempt to tell a World War Two story from the perspective of German female civilians. I haven’t seen or read anything from that perspective yet and I wish there was more on that topic.
In the acknowledgements the author expresses her thanks to Germans she has interviewed, which means that she must have had some foundation there on which to base her book on. Even so, The Women in the Castle had a distinct inauthentic feeling to me as a German. There were sentences like “I could eat five schnitzels right now”, which just made me cringe. The setting to me didn’t feel authentic in general. There were too many subtleties the author didn’t seem to be aware of. I wonder if Jessica Shattuck ever spent some actual time in Germany for her book. Or did she just eat Schnitzel there? I think I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if I weren’t German and didn’t notice the discrepancies. They are not obvious but the book just never felt quite “right”.
To be honest, the whole book never felt quite right to me. As much as I enjoyed the stories of the three women in the castle, I could never get invested in the characters or the overall story. The Women in the Castle took me a long time to read because it kept dragging on right from the beginning up to the very last page.
The message the novel tries to convey is incredibly important, yet it lacks impact. I felt left wanting more from the Women in the Castle.
Like mentioned above, I appreciated the concept and the different perspective this book takes on. However, the execution is lacklustre. If it wasn’t for the unique perspective, The Women in the Castle would only have been a 2-star read for me. Unfortunately, The Women in the Castle was one of the more disappointing books I have read this year so far.