The Women in the Castleby Jessica ShattuckIt is our responsibility to read this book. Never has a hi

The Women in the Castleby Jessica ShattuckIt is our responsibility to read this book. Never has a historical fiction been more timely in our country’s history. I turned the last page of this epic as the news reported mass destruction of Jewish graves in a cemetery in my home city, the second attack this week on Jewish resting places. Is it an eerie reminder that the past cannot rest in our tumultuous present?  I received The Women in the Castle on Friday evening. I holed up for the weekend, swept through time within its uneven pages and finished the final sentence last night, on Sunday. I devoured a 360-page historical fiction in a weekend, and I was sad to see it end. There was a time in my childhood when I was enamored with WWII fiction. I think now that I shared the view of the character Ania in the book who both believed and couldn’t believe the atrocities of the war. Like there was a final barrier of doubt separating us from the truth: one man was not capable of inciting such destruction, humanity was not capable of this grand scale of evil. This was the stuff of Grimm’s horrific fairy tales and not of our collective history.The story is unique in that it deals with a heretofore overlooked population of war victims: German women. Now if you scoff that you wouldn’t want to read a tale about German women in a war that so negatively affected other groups, I would tell you: in war there are no winners. Everyone loses. And Shattuck renders the nuanced portrait of inscrutable loss through a lens of compassion and clarity. The narrative switches seamlessly between the time before and after the war. Marianne has inherited the titular castle. Stalwart and no nonsense, committed to her principles, but fiercely loving and with a seed of self-doubt buried underneath her depths, Marianne leads the triumvirate with two daughters and a son in tow. Through a series of catastrophic events, she takes in Benita, young naïve wife to her own former love, and Benita’s son, the constant reminder of his father, as well as Ania, the reported wife of a resister with her two sullen boys. I’d like to say that the women become the best of friends and through love and tears they wrestle through the difficult times. This is not the case. The randomness of the makeshift family is just that - random, built upon a foundation of shared loss, upon soil tilled with guilt amidst a landscape thick with violence. In that environment, who knows what will survive?  In many ways, you know this story. It is our collective tale of shame, of complicity, of ignorance. It is a tale of strangers killing strangers. But it is also our collective story of hope, of courage, of resistance. It is a story of strangers saving strangers. Shattuck’s writing is, in a word, exquisite. The transportive power of her phrases matches that of Jennifer Egan (a visit from the goon squad); her insight to human nature tantamount to Lily King (Euphoria) and Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You). My own edition of the book is covered in green highlighter and when I reread the passages, the words construct tangible uneven planks underneath my toes only to drop the floor out from under me in the next line. I would not be surprised if this beautiful, necessary piece were nominated for the Pulitzer. Sweeping in scope, it is frighteningly topical, poignantly crafted and deeply personal. It is our collective history. And it’s time we acknowledge that it cannot stay buried. *I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.  -- source link
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