City of Women (edition 2012)

City of Women is best described in two words: tense and intense. As residents of Berlin during WWII deal with the hardships of war, they are confronted daily with military actions which, for those like Sigrid Schröder, pose a moral dilemma. The constant doubts and suspicions of family, neighbors, and coworkers impart a palpable tension that is unrelenting over the course of the novel.

It took me a little longer than usual to become fully invested in this novel. However, once involved, City of Women haunted me night and day until I finished... and then for days afterward. The experience, while not exactly enjoyable, gives plenty of food for thought.


A note on the audio production:

City of Women is one of the best-executed narrations I have come across in ten years of listening to audiobooks. I can't imagine another narrator doing a better job with this than Suzanne Bertish. Her voice and tone are pitch perfect; you can literally feel the tension, anger, and fear. The audio version of this novel enhances and heightens the overall experience - very highly recommended.


Read or listen?
Listen, most definitely.

My rating: 4 stars ( )

4 1/2 stars

I’m struggling because I want to do this book justice but I am not in the mood to write a review. I want to get something down though when everything is fairly fresh in my mind, because I loved this book.

I read this as a buddy read with my Goodreads friend Diane, and also read it for my real world book club. I’ve been wanting to read this for ages, and I’m so glad I got to this no later than I did.

I even liked the love story, and I’m not a romance fan.

Many of the characters are so memorable. I love how the people are complicated and the relationships are complicated. They felt very real. I appreciate that a male author could write such an authentic seeming female character, telling the story in third person but mostly from her point of view. I developed such strong feelings for the characters, ranging from love and admiration to hatred and, until the end of the book, at times I felt confused by some of them. With some characters, I enjoyed getting to know them layer by layer; it’s how people generally do get to know each other.

There is also such a rich plot, with many twists, a few of which I guessed ahead of the reveal, most of which I didn’t guess, and a couple that I didn’t at all see coming. I loved how at one point in the story, I had to suspend disbelief in a major way, but then because of a twist, that part of the story made total sense, that really something else was going on that was a much more sensible thing to have happened. Everything, about people’s motivations and personalities, and what happens in the story, they all ended up making sense to me, even though some were emotionally disturbing. In some chapters, so much action is packed into so few pages.

I learned some things too. I had no idea that there were that many Jews left in Berlin in 1943. I got such a feel for WWII Berlin. The atmosphere came through so well, both of the city, and of Sigrid’s internal experience. At the beginning, in particular, the oppressiveness was so well drawn. Sigrid’s life as it was, the experiences in the bomb shelters, just everything had me captivated.

I loved the writing style.

I relished the suspense, and there was a lot of it.

I got completely engrossed in the book and it was really hard to put down. When I did keep reading, the pages, chapters just flew by. I was trying to keep in sync with my buddy (which we basically were able to do) and at one point the narrative was so gripping that, even though I was keeping careful track, I hadn’t realized I’d read from one chapter into the next.

Like many Jews, I've always wondered about what if I was in the Holocaust? Would I have been shot, drowned, gassed, starved, beaten to death, or would I have gotten out of occupied Europe in time, or gone into hiding, etc?? And then I wonder what if it was here and now and another group of people, a group of which I was not a part? Would I risk my life to help them directly? Indirectly? Would I help in ways with less risk to myself? Would I try to ignore the situation and do nothing? I'd like to think I would help, but I've never felt all that brave. I love these kinds of books, fiction and non-fiction, because they do make you think, as well as entertain you. This is a perfect book to get me again thinking of these questions. And there is a lovely 4 page long author’s note at the end that addresses some of the “what would you do” question.

This is a great book! I highly recommend it to all historical fiction fans, particularly those interested in the WWII years, and especially those who enjoy reading books with strong female characters. ( )

1943 is a pivotal time in Berlin. The Sixth Army has failed in the brutal Battle of Stalingrad and the papers report "strategic withdrawals" as if they are victories. The city is cold and gray, with food rations only slightly better than starvation. Nazi Party members inform on neighbors, friends and co-workers for the slightest infractions. British bombs rain down most nights, forcing Berliners to sit in dark, dank, smelly cellars wondering if this is where their end will come.

Sigrid Schröder is one of the many women living without men in Berlin. Her bank employee husband, Kaspar, is at the Russian front, she works at the patent office and she lives with his poisonous mother-in-law, who has always despised her. Sigrid lives the life of a typical hausfrau of the time, trudging back and forth from work, to the food queues, to her home. She keeps her head down, blind to the evidence of Germany's crimes all around her. She is blind to the forced laborers from conquered countries who do the most menial work all over the city. She looks away when the security police chase down ordinary-looking people, haul them off the U-Bahn and roughly take them away. Sigrid does see when her neighbor, Frau Remki, rails against the Nazis she holds responsible for her only son's death in battle and then kills herself before the Gestapo come for her, but what can she do?

Sigrid takes any opportunity to escape Mother Schröder, going to movies as often as possible. That is where she met her lover, Egon, who is living a secret life, and first became acquainted with Ericha, a young home helper who has a secret life as well, working with an underground group to help smuggle Jews and other "undesirables" out of Germany. Egon and Ericha open Sigrid's eyes.

Before the Nazi era, Jews were nearly one-third of Berlin's population and were well assimilated, with extensive personal and business relationships with so-called Aryans, including many intermarriages. For public relations reasons, the Nazis were relatively slow to deport Berlin Jews to the eastern ghettos and death camps. From 1941 to 1943, roundups and transports intensified until, during 1943, the Nazi party declared the city "Judenfrei," or free of Jews. Even then, though, there were several thousand Jews still in the city. Some were married to Aryans and others were living underground and were called U-Boats.

Author David R. Gillham expertly conveys the confusion, despair, anger, fear and exhaustion of life in Berlin as it is becoming clear that the Germans' war in Russia is failing and the tide is turning. Life is increasingly tough for ordinary Germans, and wounded soldiers from the Eastern Front are talking about the atrocities they saw and committed there. Rumors are spreading about what is really happening to Jews. Some Berliners are horror-struck, while others only fear what retribution may come to them if the war is lost.

Gillham's Sigrid is drawn into Ericha's secret life, and it transforms her. Her involvement slowly reveals to her the true characters of so many people she interacts with, from her mother-in-law to her best friend at work, the neighbors in her building, people on the street and behind doors. She now sees what is going on in Berlin and in the war, and begins to understand what her conventional morality is worth in a time and place without respect for humanity. Now that her eyes are opened, she lives a different life, choosing paths that would have been unimaginable to her only weeks earlier.

I've read dozens of fiction and non-fiction books about Berlin in World War II, but I've seldom come across a book with such powerful and lyrical but hard-hitting writing, or one that presented complex characters so well. The book is full of emotion, but without sentimentalism. The story is engrossing, thought-provoking and dramatic, with scenes of breathtaking suspense and tension. Highly recommended.

If you are interested in other books about Berlin in World War II, you might enjoy:

Peter Wyden: Stella: One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitler's Germany. A riveting and heartbreaking story about a "U-Boat" coerced into become a Jew-catcher for the Gestapo.

Nathan Stoltzfus: Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany. In a 1943 roundup of 10,000 Jews, 2,000 who were married to non-Jews were locked up in a collection center on Berlin's Rosenstrasse. As spouses, mostly wives, found out about what had happened, they spontaneously gathered outside the building and shouted for their spouses to be released. The protests grew, despite threats and intimidation by the Gestapo, and at the end of a week, nearly all of the internees were released and survived until the war's end. A fascinating look at one of the few cases of public resistance to the Nazi campaign against the Jews.

Marie Vassiltchikov: Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945. Daily life of a White Russian princess who had emigrated to Germany. She worked in the Foreign Office and had connections with those involved in the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler.

Anonymous: A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary. A former journalist who lived in Berlin tells the harrowing story of what happened to the city of women after the Russian tanks arrived.

DISCLOSURE: I received a free review copy of this book ( )

This is too obviously written by a man. That is, I only got 2 CD's into the book (of 11) but what si happening with what seems to be the main character is so 'male fantasy' that I just couldn't keep going. ( )

In 1943 Germany, with most men engaged in war, the city of Berlin has become a city void of men, with only women and children and the elderly living within its boundaries.

In David R. Gillham’s novel The City of Women, he takes us into the heart of Germany, and through the eyes of an unforgettable character named Sigrid, he introduces us to the moral and daily challenges faced by women struggling to maintain a semblance of normality during the darkest days of World War II. This he accomplishes with immense insight and depth.

With her husband Kaspar away fighting somewhere, a young stenographer named Sigrid remains at home to care for her mean-spirited, difficult to please, mother-in-law. With food, clothing, and other necessities of life in short supply, she meets a Jewish man named Egon who peddles goods in the black market and enters into a passionate affair with him.

As the American and British begin bombing the city, more and more, Sigrid is forced into bomb shelters. As life becomes more difficult, and never knowing who can be trusted, Sigrid is inadvertently drawn to a young teenager named Ericha and soon finds herself delivering items and supplies to house where Jews are being hidden. As the book progresses, Sigrid’s life becomes riddled with danger.

This dark novel is impossible to put down. Readers can experience the emotions of the times, the bomb sirens, the sound of low flying aircraft about to let loose their deadly charges, the hunger and hardship, and most of all, the fear. Sigrid’s actions leave the reader questioning her moral choices, yet keenly aware of how the harsh times affected her ability to make decisions and forced her to act in ways contrary to her spirit. Mesmeric characters, a desperate setting, and a plot that keeps moving toward a riveting conclusion, makes this book a must read. This one is sure to be a bestseller. ( )