Book Review: City of Women by David R. Gillham

About:
City of Women by David R. Gillham is a novel taking place in Berlin circa World War II. This is Mr. Gillham’s debt novel.

• 437 pages
• Publisher: Berkley
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425252965

My rat­ing for City of Women — 4

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Thoughts:
City of Women by David R. Gillham is a profound, layered, dark and gloomy historical account, well written and interesting. The book is somber and brooding by large, but it is well researched and a very insightful read.

Mr. Gillham writes about the misery, despair and paranoia of the German people living under a Nazi regime. A world where evil rules, social justice does not exist, and a wrong word would send you off to a concentration camp, while lacking a safe shelter and food.

The novel is very compelling, the author keeps the narrative flowing and my interest grew as I was reading. The characters, I felt, were realistic, even though some were unpleasant and manipulative.

The depiction of war time Berlin, the despair and hopelessness its citizens felt comes across very clearly. The author does use several unlikely coincidences to more the story along, a few too many for my liking but most of them worked, I was maybe 85% into the book when they started to bother me.

Despite being dark and somewhat disturbing, this is a wonderful novel which knows how to set an atmosphere and dance with it. The book is a wonderful historical read which represents many stories we’ll never know about.

Synopsis:
Sigrid Schröder is a German hausfrau in Berlin, 1943. Her husbands is serving his country in the front and she lives with her bitter mother in law, going to work at the patent office each day. Sigrid loves the cinema and goes often, one day she meets a Jewish man who becomes her lover and a woman who introduces her to the underground network of hiding people.

Buy this book in paper or elec­tor­nic format*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I bought this book.
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