Book Concierge's Reviews > Resistance Women

Book on CD narrated by Saskia Maarleveld
3.5***

This is a work of historical fiction concentrating on the women who worked in Germany as part of the resistance movement to thwart Hitler’s ambitions. Chiaverini uses research into the lives of real women – Martha Dodd, Mildred Harnack, and Greta Kuckhoff – who formed part of the “Red Orchestra” cell, relaying information to both the Soviets and the Americans, at great danger to themselves, their friends and their families. In an author note, she writes that she invented the Jewish student Sara Weitz, to fill out the quartet of women, but based her on real stories of Jewish women who also worked for the resistance.

I was engaged and interested from beginning to end. The novel spans the time from June 1929 to the year following the end of the war, 1946. I had to wonder at times, whether Chiaverini was lifting certain phrases and descriptions of the political climate that led to the rise of Nazism from current-day news reporting and commentary. It was chillingly familiar.

I did think that some of the story lines got overly complicated, while others just petered out. Sara’s story, in particular, fizzled away. But then, she is the fictional character, and the last chapters focus on the real women.

Saskia Maarleveld does a fine job of narrating the audiobook. She has a lot of characters to deal with and she managed to give them sufficiently distinct voices so that I was able to keep them straight.