Here’s the cover to David R Gillham’s novel, City of Women. I love how provocative it is – for me, it evokes both sadness and sensuality.
In David R. Gillham’s novel, City of Women, Sigrid Schröder starts out as the ideal ‘army wife.’ Berlin has become a city of women, children, the elderly, and the disabled – all of the able-bodied men have been drafted into the military. After her husband’s draft to the frontline service, Sigrid lives with her irritable and cantankerous mother-in-law, which only heightens her sense of claustrophobia. In order to escape, Sigrid finds refuge in the cinema and meets a man that changes her life just as much as the war does.
As the war builds, so do Sigrid’s secrets. This mystery man that Sigrid meets in the cinema becomes her lover. As if that wasn’t enough, this mystery man that Sigrid can’t get off of her mind is a Jew named Egon Weiss. As Sigrid lives her life in a slowly deteriorating society and city, she can’t help but become involved in the Jewish cause by hiding a Jewish mother and two young daughters, who she believes are her lover’s family.
Although the premise of a German hiding Jews during World War II isn’t exactly a new one, Gillham tackles this theme with gusto. In contrast with other authors, Gillham approaches his novel from a strong, liberated, and female perspective. Aside from her bold personality, Sigrid’s entire world is made up of women. She lives with her mother-in-law, she has strange encounters with her neighbors’ daughter, and she resides in a city that is bereft of men. Literally, everyone she meets, knows, and sees is female. And, as both the war and the novel progress, Sigrid transforms from an oblivious housewife into an aware critic of her government and her complacent community.
Interestingly, I found myself sympathizing with Sigrid despite her reluctance to involve herself in anything dangerous. In fact, Gillham made it very easy for me to understand why she resists joining the Jewish cause. Although I hoped that Sigrid would risk herself for those being persecuted by the Nazis, I still could easily understand her anguish and anxiety. It was refreshing to see how Gillham develops Sigrid’s changing psychological standpoint without writing off her initial reluctance as selfishness. Thus, Gillham constructed a protagonist that is complex, layered, and resistant to clichés.
The novel as a whole progresses in a slow burn, milking every moment of heart-racing suspense. It is most definitely not a fast-paced thriller, but I appreciated it even more for its unhurried pace. Gillham knows how and when to take his time, but he never allows the reader to become bored with the plot or the characters. His minute care in developing Sigrid’s character is especially impressive – by the end of the novel, I felt like I knew Sigrid intimately and like she had been telling me her story in person despite the third person narrative.
It came as no surprise to learn that Gillham was trained as a screenwriter. His description of an almost abandoned Berlin is impeccable. I could almost see the camera sweep across a scene of the city in a cinematic arc. With accurate and vivid historical details, Berlin itself became its own character, sometimes overriding Sigrid’s plot within its own inevitable trajectory.
The only aspect of the novel that left me dissatisfied was the lack of a glossary of German words. Throughout the novel, Gillham used German words in order to lend authenticity to his writing and to his reader’s experience. While most of the time I was able to glean meaning from the words’ contexts, I think that a glossary would have streamlined the reading process. I didn’t want to have to struggle with German words while trying to keep all of the characters and subplots straight.
Although on some levels City of Women is a simple book to describe in terms of Sigrid’s individual plot, it is really about the greater choices that must be made in impossible times. If good people act amorally in the name of self-preservation and survival, are they no longer good? If a bad man makes a righteous move, is he no longer bad? Even characters refusing to recognize their decisions is cast as a choice in and of itself. Thus, Gillham forces his reader to reconsider the fuzzy boundaries between right and wrong and our classifications of such actions and people. His details and artistically delineated dilemmas make City of Women a novel to be read and to be remembered.
Churning Pages 