Fred's Reviews > Resistance Women

This ambitious World War II novel is vast in its historical record and scope, taking us from the beginning of Hitler's rise to power through the end of the war, focusing in detail on the sociological and historical aspects of the rise of Nazism and Hitler, and the attempts by a few brave souls to withstand and resist and finally to just survive the onslaught of the horrors the characters face that grow larger and more incomprehensible every year.

The author's grasp of the period is amazing, and she conveys the realities of the time in Germany very well. There are broad historical brushstrokes as well as more detailed looks at what everyday life must have been like for your average German citizen, who found herself swept up in the madness of the National Socialist movement.

Because of the tremendous scope of this novel, which aims to provide an idea of the larger historical movement as well as the more focused daily impact of these movements on the lives of the characters, the story suffers when the author turns her attention to the actual human interests here, the 4 characters that are the foci of the story. In good historical fiction the historical background serves the interest of the characters, serves as a way to highlight their personalities, choices, actions, etc. The setting should always be in service to the characters. In this novel, however, the characters seem to just be the conduit for writing about the history, which is clearly the author's strong point. There's no heart here. We see the individual lives and the specifics of the day-to-day encroachments of Nazism on the characters, but there is a lack of soul in their stories. The reader is never very attached to them. This is partly because there are so many of them to deal with, the author never delves too deeply into any of their minds or hearts.

The author does a great job of showing the at first slow progression of the steady march of Nazism on German society, the incremental changes to the Jewish laws, and the way that the characters become the frogs in the pot as they go along with the changes to their world, having no other choice but to hope for the best as their world crumbles around them. We feel along with the characters the various reactions to events, moving from denial to disbelief, to sadness, shock, and horror.

I have to admit, though, that I skimmed much of this novel. It was overlong, at more than 500 pages. I think the author was trying for a saga but ended up with a textbook with some personal stories thrown in.

A word about politics: in a novel like this, the reader should never be able to detect the author's political views. However, the author makes a not-so-subtle point of repeatedly drawing a parallel between Hitler and Donald Trump. No matter where an author's political leanings fall, a novel of historical fiction is not the appropriate venue for such musings. Aside from that, the comparisons are ludicrous and so beyond the pale of any rational political discourse, that the novel suffers greatly from this insertion of the author's views.