Education, Culture, Art, economy

THE REST IS HISTORY

Jessica Shattuck’spoignant World War IIpage-turner,

The Women in the Castle (William Morrow), follows an unlikely threesome, united by their husbands’ deaths, forging paths in a post-Hitler world

MARIE CLAIRE: What inspired a novel about the aftermath of World War II, rather than the war itself? JESSICA SHATTUCK: I grew up hearing my mother’s childhood stories about that time—she was born in 1943 and raised in postwar Germany—and I was interested in that aftermath, when people were faced with the enormity of the horror that they had just either enabled, been complicit in, or resisted, whatever their role was.

M C: The book follows three women who embody that range of responsibility. Why did you also track their children, in the present day? JS: Another part of what compelled me to write this was looking at my own grandmother who lived to be 100 and survived that time period. The idea of these people who’ve been through a war—a war in which they were on the bad side—and then have to rebuild their lives, come to grips
with what they’ve done, and somehow live with themselves and with a whole new reality ... that, to me, was fascinating. That juxtaposition of the present day with the previous world they’d experienced was essential.

M C: With most war stories, there’s a hero, but this book doesn’t have one ... JS: I wanted this book to be about “ordinary” people who were flawed and who tried to do good or didn’t try hard enough. There were no real heroes here.

MC: Talking about Hitler’s regime in the context of recent political events seems unnervingly prescient. How does it feel to write something unintentionally contemporary-feeling?

JS: The fact that there’s so much resonance to today makes our need to understand not just the experience of the victims, but also the experience and enthusiasm of the people who perpetrated the Holocaust, more important now than ever before. —S.O.