A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.
Overall I think it was entertaining and suspenseful and I like the idea but it fell a little flat. This was an interesting take on WWII and its effect in Berlin. Most of the main characters are female but I think it fell short in being driven by women (in the same way most female-centric novels by men are). Instead of an intricate network of women helping the Jews, there are a few women who deal mostly through relationships with men. Sigrid is so caught up in her multiple relationships that it was hard for me to even get a grip on who she is beyond the shallow “I need to do something because killing people is wrong and I’m different because I understand that.” I think that elaborating on some of the other female characters in the novel – the mother in law, the officer’s wife, the lesbian, the photographer, Renate (really any of them) would have given the whole story more depth. Her closest relationship before Erika ended up being with her coworker and it seemed like they exclusively talked about men. And in the end, the author gives us the stereotypical series of men stepping in to save Sigrid. So yeah, for a book supposedly focused on women, it doesn’t really pass the Bechdel test.