Lilac Girls: A Novel (Woolsey-Ferriday)

Meh. Just not that into historical fiction.

Book club book, don't think I'm going to finish it. I will see after discussing.

The writing is atrocious. It's just too distracting from what is a mediocre book. From the very first page, there are sentences like this,
"He'd fired people for a lot less than being twenty minutes late, but the one time of the year the New York elite opened their wallets and pretended they cared about France was no time for skimpy boutonnieres."

What?

Or take this introduction of a brand new character:, "Gerda, a pretty, chestnut-haired girl from Dusseldorf, had attended the School of Midwifery there. She was an excellent nurse, but even Gerda couldn't handle the Revier."

I don't even know how to describe it. It's both choppy and long-winded. It mashes seemingly insignificant details in with key narrative.

Polish, German, and French words are sprinkled in with straight, northern american prose. It is jarring and feels out of place.

Story: At barely 1/4 of the way through the book, it's irresponsible for me to review it. From what I've read so far, there is nothing new here. Same old female characters, crisis of war, cruelty and death of innocents, men being shitty men. I was hoping that Herta would turn out to be lesbian - that would be a good twist. As of page 147, the story had not pulled me in despite the cliff hanger at the end of each chapter.

Learning: There's a good chance that I'd learn something about Ravensbrook. I'll read the Wikipedia article.

Ending: Obviously cannot talk to the ending, but let me guess: predictable.

Nicely written...great story about women who had to endure so much.

Audio book version. I enjoyed this book. I knew nothing about this story or the people it highlights before listening to this book. It was beautifully read. Each reader had the dialect of her character and read with emotion. What does a New York socialite, Polish woman, and a female German doctor have in common? I would have never thought these three women would have stories that intertwined in some way. The most poignant line from the book for me: “I’d survived Ravenburg how could ordinary life be harder than that?”

The horrors ofWWII! In this book, we follow a polish teen sent to Ravensbruck, a female german doctor and a NY socialite through their experiences of the war. It is a poignant story based on real characters. The author has done a nice job of balancing horror with hope here.