Comment

Jun 06, 2019xyzxyzxyzII rated this title 0.5 out of 5 stars
A major disappointment. I've enjoyed Chiaverini's other historical fiction, but this one is awful. While it does introduce overlooked historical figures, it superimposes 21st century thinking on them. Women can and have done important things for reasons that are incomprehensible to modern group think, but you'd never know it from this book. Chiaverini is a wonderful storyteller, but her writing is weak: people and events driving actions are dismissed in two sentences, while more attention is given to the food the figures ate. While writing about women with broad views, Chiaverini sticks to a narrow theme: anyone who disagrees with any thought or action of the characters is a Nazi (which is ironic, given the classification of Martha Dodd as a resistance woman. Read Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts to learn of a different side of Dodd and her boyfriend, a Gestapo leader. Not to mention her WWII and post-war espionage for the Soviet Union.) This is history written backwards: if only the Germans had held 21st century attitudes, think of all the suffering that could have been avoided! But the implication to the reader is clear: hold any idea to the left- or the right-of any protagonist, and you're a Nazi! The point of this book isn't to tell the story of these brave (and largely forgotten) women, it is to draw a parallel to today's politics. More non-fiction should be available; where the facts are limited, anything can be implied. This book reads like the propaganda the women suffered under.