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    The Women in the Castle
    The Women in the Castle
    The Women in the Castle
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Women in the Castle

    Written by Jessica Shattuck

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 28, 2017
    ISBN9780062657381
    The Women in the Castle
    Author

    Jessica Shattuck

    Jessica Shattuck is the New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle; The Hazards of Good Breeding, a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the PEN/Winship Award; and Perfect Life. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Glamour, Mother Jones, and Wired, among other publications.

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    Reviews for The Women in the Castle

    4/5

    732 ratings88 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a fantastic, great, riveting, and beautifully written story. It offers a unique perspective on Nazi/WW2 effects and explores the experiences of non-Jewish German women during the war and post-war period. The book is moving, captivating, and important in shedding light on the other side of the story. While there is one negative review comparing it to 'The Nightingale', overall, readers highly recommend this unique and untold story.

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      “As a gardener, she knows that if you turn over a rock, you will find worms and potato bugs.” — Jessica Shattuck, “The Women in the Castle”In Germany after the war, finding ex-Nazis or Nazi sympathizers was as easy as turning over a rock. Even Marianne von Lingenfels finds this to be true in Jessica Shattuck's powerful 2017 novel “The Women in the Castle.”The widow of a man executed for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler, she tries after the war to gather up as many wives and children of resisters as she can find and take them to her family castle. She finds just two of the women on her list, beautiful Benita, the widow of Marianne's childhood friend who was also executed by the Nazis, and Ania, a somber woman whose name on the list is something of a mystery. Both women have young sons.Years pass, and life in postwar Germany gradually gets easier. Yet Marianne discovers disturbing things about the two women she has adopted as part of her family. Benita falls in love with a former Nazi and wants to marry him, while Ania already has a Nazi husband who turns up after she marries a nearby farmer.Marianne feels betrayed, but by 1991 when the novel ends she wonders if she is not the one who has betrayed her friends. Are there not worms even under her own rock?Shattuck's book explores the lives of the war's widows and the ways Nazi guilt spread to them and even to their children, proving that Nazi Germany, the subject of so many novels since the 1930s, can still be mined for original plots and ideas.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I found this book fascinating because it was mainly about what happened in Germany after World War II. Even though it did have flashbacks to the war itself, the plot concentrated on the three widows of Nazi resisters who inhabited castle Von Lingenfels after they were left to try to make it on their own amidst the destruction of their country and former lives. It makes for a plot that is filled with characters who are not black and white or evil and good, but rather many shades of gray. Shattuck treats the Nazi soldier who is horrified with his former life with as much respect as the limousine liberal Prussian duchess who takes in all of the widows at the end of the war. In the end, all people's stories must be told and judged individually.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This riveting, beautifully written and narrated story needed to be told. It is from the perspective of three non-Jewish German women brought together towards the end of WWII, whose beliefs and experiences set the trajectory of their lives and choices. Both heartbreaking and redeeming, it captivated me from the beginning.
    • 5/5
      It's important to know the other side of the story. So well written. Great book
    • 4/5
      Engaging characters and unique plot.
    • 5/5
      very moving book about war and post war in Germany. beautifully read.
    • 5/5
      This is a very powerful book. It covers a difficult time in history even though it doesn’t delve too deeply into WWII the impacts of Hitler and his policies are felt throughout. The book opens in the time just as Hitler is coming to power and some people see his danger and others don’t. A group of friends come together for what will be one of the last parties together before their worlds implode. As the men fight to defeat Hitler the women do what needs doing to survive.After the war Marianne comes back to the castle that had been in her husband’s family for generations to regroup and to try and find some of the other widows of the men who tried to kill Hitler. She finds her best friend’s widow Benita and their young son Martin. They join Marianne and her sons in creating the best life they can although Benita is not as introspective as Marianne and she just wants to move forward and forget. Marianne never wants to forget so it doesn’t happen again. She keeps searching and searching and soon a third woman joins the family. They don’t all agree or even get along but they do survive – sometimes through the shear force of Marianne’s will.The characters in this book are all very well defined and very well drawn. When your story depends so much on personalities and how they interact it’s important for the fictional characters to come across as real to the reader and they all do in this book – from the most significant to the face in the crowd. There are a number of different subplots that help to define each character and a couple of them truly surprised me. The only story that disappointed was that of Benita but I always do have problems with people who live a clueless life. I found myself thinking about this book for days after I finished it.
    • 5/5
      Great historical fiction
      That generation went through so much
    • 1/5
      If you want to read a mediocre story about frivolous, helpless women who happened to be alive during World War II, this is definitely it. The Nightingale is a far better read. Skip this one.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic! Great writing and a unique take on Nazi/WW2 effects (didn’t think yet another view was possible). Causes the reader to ask questions of him/herself. Also, though I love genealogy already, the book has inspired me anew to dig deep into my German roots: not quite as scared of what I may find. If naziism is in my family’s past, there is healing to be had yet.
    • 5/5
      I couldn’t put this down! Such an untold story about post WWII life. The telling reminded me of the woman in gold. Highly recommend this unique story of women picking up the pieces after the destruction of war and resistance
    • 1/5
      DNF - I can see that I am hugely in the minority, but I just didn't like this book. It started out strong with a party in a Bavarian castle on Kristallnach and then jumped right to the period after the war during denazification. But after that, nothing has happened. I haven't found the writing to be beautiful as others have and, for me, the characters are coming across very vanilla and bland. At 35% through I haven't found anything particularly intriguing or suspenseful to carry me through to finishing.
    • 2/5
      At the beginning of WWII, Marianne, her husband and a group of German nobility meet to discuss Hitler. During WWII, the men enact and fail in an assassination attempt. This book outlines the aftermath, as the children and widows are left to pick up the pieces. Marianne does her best to bring these women and children together, supporting several in her husband’s ancestral castle.

      This book did not resonate with me. I thought it was slow moving and a bit disjointed. Some of the storyline was confusing, just because of the order in which it was presented. The women seemed a bit one dimensional, I would have liked to have seen more personality. Overall, a bust.
    • 5/5
      Great storytelling, interesting time and characters. Not sure why the narrator chose a fake German accent throughout, though.... apart from that, the narration was fine.
    • 4/5
      I've never read WWII from the point of view of three ordinary German women--none of them Jews or high-ranking Nazis. The book's major selling point is its three contrasting perspectives: one a German of low birth, little education, and less interest in politics; one in the "middle class" with innocent dreams of a better Germany and a better world; and one highly educated member of the elite very aware of the global political situation and shouldering responsibility on the macro as well as the micro level. (I have to admit, I saw a bit of myself in Marianne.)

      I liked each of the women's stories separately. Together...well, it felt a bit forced. I would have liked this book well enough as a set of interwoven novellas or short stories, even without the final conclusion that brings everyone back together. But then, the point of the story is that we’re able to contrast the three women’s perspectives. I don’t know, as much as I loved the pieces that made up the story, I wasn’t wholly satisfied with the way they fit together.

      Shattuck does a superb job giving the three women independent personalities and opinions, even if all have opinions that we modern readers can sympathize with. There’s little to challenge us that isn’t answered for in the adjacent paragraphs. Shattuck does play around with time a bit within chapters, especially Ania is reminiscing about her time during the war—so it’s possible that the reader is meant to understand that the “answers” are things that the characters have thought about themselves, the way that they’ve justified the events in their own heads.

      I liked Shattuck’s writing style over all, but there were a few places where the language felt a little bit too self-consciously literary. There was a chapter-opening line somewhere in there about how the white-capped waves on a lake looked like an audience’s clapping hands. Um, what?

      But setting aside the particulars of this finicky, over-read bookworm, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history, particularly that of WWII, and/or how the past might apply to what’s happening in the world right now. Yes, like all books about Germany in WWII this one brings out the biggest questions about action and inaction—but unlike so many other books I’ve read, it actually offers some answers to get us on our way. This is a deeply educational book, for all that it’s fiction--maybe even because it's fiction, because it is so explanatory without being heavy-handed. That quality will make this an incredibly popular book with book clubs and probably some school classes as well, both history and English. I look forward to hearing others' thoughts about this book when it publishes in April.

      Quote Roundup

      (75) So many little lines in this book were eerily similar to things that are being said these days, but this one in particular hit home:
      “Many of their friends had known Hitler was a lunatic, a leader whose lowbrow appeal to people’s most selfish, self-pitying emotions and ignorance was an embarrassment to their country. They had watched him make a masterwork of scapegoating Jews for Germany’s fall from power and persuade his followers that enlightenment, humanity, and tolerance were weaknesses--‘Jewish’ ideas that led to defeat.”

      (95) I didn’t know that the Allies forced Germans to attend viewings of films that showed the concentration camps, but it seems like a very good idea. It’s hard to imagine, in this day of brutal media and blunt reporting, how shocking these images must have been at the time. But it’s important for the citizens of a country to be aware of their whole past—the glorious times as well as the dark ones. The US could do with taking a leaf out of its own book to highlight for students a few key episodes of genocide perpetrated in its own history.

      (125) I think it’s a bit too easy for a reader to dislike Marianne’s personality, but it is important that Shattuck takes the time on this page to show how even the enlightened who spoke out against Nazism still benefited from it.

      (149) Shattuck has some lovely language here about how art is central to humanity—“not a luxury but a compulsion”—but what I find more interesting is that it’s in contrast to some earlier thoughts from another character who found during the war that the artistic spirit she thought so strong withered and died.

      (208) “For me, shame is the only right way to live.”
      Said by a very low-ranking Nazi who was far enough from the worst action to explain away his guilt—but could not.

      I found Ania’s story as a middle-class German with high ideals and enthusiasm for self/country-improvement the most interesting and compelling, the most relatable of the three wartime narratives. It’s here that we get an idea of how everyday Germans might have reacted to the changes taking place in their country from the end of WWI (237) through WWII, and to the call for accountability in the aftermath. Ania is the kind of person that I think most people would find themselves to be in this kind of situation: focused on the good, focused on survival, and then wracked with guilt over some actions and lack thereof for the rest of their lives.

      (254) This comment surprised me in its simplicity and its obviousness:
      “She has never been taught that drawing distinctions between races is dangerous. In Germany, there is no great history of equal rights.”
      It seems strange that I haven’t heard an explanation like this before!
      And this comment gnaws at me for how familiar and applicable it is to myself:
      “And, really, Ania is busy with her own life.”

      (259) (261) Through Ania, Shattuck addresses some common questions about how Germans could just ignore stories of what was happening in the concentration camps.

      (322) [A writer] was drawn especially to the story of Marianne as a woman in a man’s world, though Marianne herself never felt particularly constrained by this. After all, as she pointed out to Claire, if she were a man, she would be dead.

      (334) Germany has become the agricultural wonder Hitler always imagined, every meter planted with crops or windmills or endless flats of solar panels.
      Ah, what supreme irony.

      (354) What is meant to be a moving scene to close the book was ruined by my trivial knowledge. If you carve something in the bark of a tree, it won’t move up as the tree grows up—bark widens, which is why it cracks on so many trees, so the image would be the same height even if it ended up looking broken. Which could have been symbolic in its own way. Alas, it seems that not the author, editors, copyeditors, proofreaders, etc., knew this fact. What stupid little things distract me. Curse you, Encyclopedia Brown!
    • 5/5
      Loved the strong women characters! Great way to wrap up a story, also!!
    • 4/5
      After reading All the Light We Cannot See, I avoided historical fiction of this time period for a while. It was such a beautiful book, I thought it would be a disservice to another book, so I held off on reading this one for a while. The two books are very different, but I think I enjoyed them both much more because of the distance between the readings.

      The Women in the Castle is a story about the wives and children of Nazi resisters after World War II. Marianne von Lingenfels makes a promise to her husband and friends that she will look after their families if their assassination plans should go awry. Marianne keeps her promise and the story follows her and two other wives as they navigate the post-war world.

      I wouldn’t say that I read this because of the time period in which it was set, so any historical inaccuracies there may have been didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story. I picked it up because of the female relationships it promised and in that respect, it did not disappoint. The three women are not always depicted as the best of friends. They annoy each other and disagree with one another’s choices. But all three contribute to the other’s survival. They make choices for the good of their families. They are strong, flawed, well-written characters.
    • 5/5
      I have done some good reading this year but The Women In the Castle was the best so far. Jessica Shattuck told a deeply engaging story that got at the complexities of war and peace, specifically the actions and reactions of ordinary Germans to the horrors of World War II. She tells the story of three women and their children as they live through the chaos that was the end of the war. The women, wives of conspirators whose attempted assassination of Hitler failed in summer 1944, each bring secrets with them to the old castle, the ancestral home of one of the conspirators, where they struggle to make a life for themselves and their children. At times a painful read, the book explores survival and shame while depicting the strength of the women when faced with unimaginable horror and adversity.
    • 3/5
      The first half was a lot more interesting than the second. I especially found the end sort of anticlimactic. As if the author lost focus in the second half.

      Another problem was that I found Marianne not very likeable and generally too flat for a protagonist. The idea was pretty good though, even though the execution failed.
    • 4/5
      A beautiful book following three German women and how their lives were affected by Nazi Germany and it's defeat. This is an excellent example of how not every citizen supports the dominating beliefs, how people can be brainwashed or bullied into bad decisions, and how people face and deal with trauma in different ways.

      One of my favourite things about this book was that the central character, Marianne, was so confident in her truth that she wasn't able to see how her own ideals were affecting the other women. She was a strong, brave woman, but even she was eventually able to see that she hadn't been able to see the trees for the forest until it was too late.

      While it ends on a happier note, over all, this was a sad book with a lot of difficult circumstances.
    • 3/5
      I know this is a best seller, but I didn't care for this story. Maybe I just didn't like one of the main characters very much. I found Marianne to be judgmental and controlling.
    • 4/5
      Splendidly written story of Germans at the end of WWII which helps the reader process how an nation could have followed Hitler into the depths of hell exterminating millions of people that he deemed unfit. Based on true stories including a group of men who attempted to assassinate Hitler in 1944 and the wives and children they left behind after they were caught and killed after not succeeding. Even the morally higher group, and the one wife who knew what they were up to, made compromises. It explores the compromises and disregard of what was going on and willingness to belief lies and what we now call fake news. People felt helpless to fight the bully culture of the Nazis and in many ways there was no black and white morality, but rather shades of gray and small measures to not directly participate in the exterminations. A thought provoking read that is relevant today with fake news, lies by leaders, and a culture of exclusion that has built in the US and around the world. Citizens must rise up against these tactics early on before they snowball into the kinds of major exterminations we have seen in recent years in Uganda, Bosnia, Syria, and many other places. In the mid-1930s, if strong leaders would have risen up against the Nazi bullies they might have been stopped.
    • 4/5
      This saga begins in 1938 and it doesn’t end until 1991. There are flashbacks and jumps forward as the author tells the story of three very different women united by a war. The widows of resisters in a failed plot to kill Hitler, they must now make their way in a ravaged country, to save themselves and their children. Their story is a captivating one, made even more so by the revelations that are finally exposed in their back stories. It’s not so much a story of the war itself, but rather of the ordinary people caught up in something they really didn’t understand, at least, not at first. It’s a of secrets and of trust, of honor and dishonor, and of survival and giving up. The characters are compelling and their story, though just plain dreadful at times, is beautifully told.
    • 3/5
      Book on CD narrated by Cassandra Campbell


      Three German widows are brought together shortly after World War II ends. Marianne von Lingenfels returns to her deceased husband’s ancestral castle – now in ruins. He had conspired with other resisters to assassinate Hitler and was himself murdered. But Marianne had promised her husband’s conspirators to find their families and help them, so that is what she sets out to do. First she rescues Martin, the young son of her childhood friend, from a Nazi re-education camp. They then find Martin’s mother, Betina, a beautiful but naïve, young woman. Finally, Marianne locates Ania, a quiet, resourceful and determined mother of two boys who have been in one of the many refugee camps that house the many citizens displaced by the war.

      I liked the idea of this novel’s story more than I liked the actual book.

      Make no mistake, there are some interesting and thought-provoking themes here. How does one move on after enduring such traumatic events? How do we recognize the ways we may be complicit – by willful ignorance, by standing by, by NOT making waves – and atone for that? Can we “allow” someone else to find happiness (let alone celebrate it), when we are so angry, hurt, fearful, ashamed? Can we allow future generations to NOT carry the burden?

      However, on the whole I found the novel completely forgettable. I’m sure this is ME and not the novel. I’ve only just now looked at the back cover with all the blurbs by authors I love, singing Shattuck’s praises. And, of course, many people whose opinions I trust have rated the book highly. Perhaps I’m just completely over the desire to read about WWII and its aftermath.

      Cassandra Campbell did a marvelous job performing the audiobook. She’s a gifted voice artist and has become one of my favorite audiobook narrators.
    • 4/5
      "She was her own kind of dreamer, a blind mathematician skating along the thin surface of life, believing in the saving power of logic, reason, and information, overlooking the whole murky expanse of feeling and animal instinct that was the real driver of human behavior, the real author of history."

      I really enjoyed this book. Set in WWII-era, this historical fiction was about finding family from the wreckage of war. I really liked learning about each of these women and their pasts.
    • 4/5
      This was the story of three German women - widows of men killed for their role in the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler - who come together in the aftermath of World War II and attempt to rebuild their lives.
      This novel is best described by a line near the end "The whole murky, impulsive side of human interaction, the tangled knots of influence and emotion". There are strong and very interesting characters in this book. Marianne, the central character is a strong, straight forward person who sees all in black and white until that leaves her relationships in a mess. Benita, beautiful, silly, empty headed and ultimately so tragic.Mysterious Ania, who's past we don't know until the end and we learn of her involvement in the Nazi world from a new perspective.
      I greatly enjoyed this novel.
    • 4/5
      This was a different look at World War II and post-war as it deals almost exclusively with Germany. The saying "To the victors go the spoils" could be amended by adding "and the book deals".

      When a group of Germans plot to assassinate Hitler during WWII, it is the men who carry out the plot but the women are affected by the aftermath when the plot fails. The men are killed but some of the women are imprisonted and their children are taken from them. When the war is finally over Marianne von Lingenfels vows to carry out her duties as "the commander of the wives and children". She moves with her own children into the old and decrepit castle belonging to her husband's family and then sets out to find the widows of other resistors. She manages to find the son of her friend from childhood (Connie Fledermann) and then his wife Benita. Benita was one of the women imprisoned and at the end of the war she was passed from one Russian soldier to another. Benita thus owes a large debt to Marianne. Another widow, Ania, is discovered by sympathetic American soldiers in a nearby displaced persons camp and she joins the household. Ania is competent and realistic and helps Marianne run the household in ways Benita can't. On a night when a large group of starving Russian soldiers descend on the castle grounds it is Ania who sits up with Marianne. And Benita almost makes the situation much worse when she goes to warn a former Nazi prisoner who helps out cutting wood about the presence of the Russians. Benita never has the antipathy to Nazis that Marianne feels so her feelings for the former Nazi tend toward friendship and then love the more they are together. As Marianne learns more about her fellow widows and their secrets she cuts off ties with them. By the end of her life (and the end of the book) she realizes that there is quite a bit of grey and not everything is black and white.
    • 4/5
      This is not the story of WWII nor is it the story of the holocaust, although those events are responsible for this story. This is the story of survival and friendship in the aftermath of a terrible time in history. Jessica Shattuck tells the story of three German women whose husbands were resistors and were killed for planning the assassination of Hitler.

      When we meet Marianne von Lingenfels it is at her husband's aunt's annual party at the Castle, on the night that will become known as Kristallnacht. She happens upon a meeting of her husband and several other resistors plotting against Hitler. "Connie" Martin Constantine Fledermann, her childhood friend jokingly appoints her Commander of wives and children. She is annoyed, but this title and promise is what brings these three women together. After the war ends, Marianne finds Martin, Connie's son and Benita his wife, both in unsavory locations/situations and takes them with her to live in The Castle. Shortly after, she receives a call from an American Officer that they have located another wife and children of one of the names she gave them. She moves Ania and her two boys to The Castle from a Displaced Person's Camp. The story tells about the trials and tribulations these women and children had to deal with during this period. The dangers from roving Russian soldiers, the lack of food and water as well as other creature comforts, yet they were better off than many others. As the story unfolds we learn about their past and how it brought them to where they were and what will become of them in this "New Germany".

      This story is one that needed to be told. I had not heard about what the citizens went through after the war. The scars that they had and the animosity between the resistors and the Nazis. Marianne was a strong woman who took a stand and helped others to the best of her ability. She was not perfect, but she was human. The plot had some slow spots but overall, kept me engaged and I enjoyed this story. A good one for historical fiction lovers. The publisher generously provided me with a copy of this book via Netgalley.

    • 5/5
      Fantastic book about three very different women caught up in the difficult world of Nazi Germany. Marianne returns to the grand castle of her husband's ancestors. She is smart, educated, and confident. When she promises to take care of the wife and child of a dear life long friend, she rescues young Martin from a Nazi reeducation center and then his mother, beautiful Benita. Even though Benita was born into meager circumstances and is young and naive, her only wish had been to escape her small town and live a good life. As Marianne undertakes to rescue more of the families of the Nazi resisters, she finds Ania and her two boys. Ania is practical and becomes a great help at the castle as the three become close while attempting to maneuver through the war including the invasion of the Russians.

      There are many acts of bravery in this story but no heroes. Each woman brings her own guilt and faults to the situation Marianne is often too confident and has strong ideological beliefs against the Nazi. Benita is not in the least political but is sensitive and wants to find love. Ania is practical above all else and eventually marries a nearby neighbor insuring her sons have an inheritance.

      The novel does not follow a chronological line but tells the story of the three together and then back tracks to their earlier lives. Each woman has a different relationship with their own children and each woman reacts differently as the war closes. Marianne makes a decision that ruins the hopes of Benita; Ania's background as a former Nazi eventually is found out.

      The last chapters of the book take place in more contemporary times with Marianne living in the United States as does Martin, Benita's son. The castle in Germany is transformed into a center for the study of peace bringing together diverse peoples living in relative luxury. How much do the children really understand the sacrifices and difficulties that each of these women endured? What happens with ideology is more important than relationships?

      This book is beautifully written and each of the characters are very believable. There are no black and white answers. Loved it!
    • 5/5
      This book grabbed me from page one and kept my eyes flying across the pages until the bitter sweet end.
      Riveting and heartbreaking and highly recommended.