Marianne literally marches in and takes her away she also magically manages to find Benita’s son, Martin, who has survived the War in a Children’s Home run by the Nazis.Īnia is located by Marianne in a nearby Displaced Persons camp, along with her two sons. Her apartment building has been bombed and she is only alive because a Russian Captain has taken a shine to her, and protects her from the other Russian soldiers who are ransacking the city and raping its women – though of course he rapes Benita, and she lives in squalor in her former home. She finds Benita, whom she met once before the War, still living in Berlin. She urgently sets about finding her fellow widows from the 20 th July plot and bringing them to live with her at the Burg, to recover and rebuild their lives. In May 1945 Marianne is living at her late husband’s family estate, Burg Lingenfels. Ania’s Polish husband was also involved in the plot, and appears once at the beginning of the novel. As we know, the plot failed, and Marianne and Benita’s husbands are executed.
Shattuck quietly inserts the husbands into the notorious 20 th July plot to assassinate Hitler, led by Claus von Stauffenberg. Marianne and Benita are widows of resistors and met through their husbands just before the War. What appealed to me about this book were the fact that it is mostly set after the War, exploring its consequences, and that the story centres around the experiences of three German women who are thrown together by circumstance, and who have all had very different experiences of the War years. I’ve read history books, personal accounts, and novels such as Alone in Berlin and City of Women so, I was happy to accept a review copy of The Women of the Castle by Jessica Shattuck when it was offered to me (something I don’t do very often!). I’ve always been interested in the literature of the Second World War, ever since a course on the Literatures of Genocide at university.
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