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City of Women David R Gillham Books

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City of Women David R Gillham Books

It is hard to believe that this is Mr. Gillham's first novel; it is THAT good. This is a very thought-provoking novel that is never once pedantic or didactic; it has a driving plot and unforgettably interesting and complex characters. Mr. Gillham weaves numerous moral questions through the book, ranging from marital fidelity in the time of war to courage in the face of personal danger; he doesn't answer most of these questions for us, but rather he lets (makes) us think about how we might act in similar circumstances. In other words, he's not afraid of moral ambiguities.

This is a very different book from Joseph Kanon's "The Good German," but they deal with similar issues and, at least in my opinion, both classics.

I greatly look forward to more books from Mr. Gillham. This one amazed me.


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City of Women David R Gillham Books Reviews

City of Women was a book club selection. I just finished the book and I have to admit that historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. Well written and thought provoking, rarely does a book grab me like this one did. I found this book to be excellent in so many ways character development, storyline, flow, consistency in purpose. Wow - I would love to find more books like this one.
What would it be like to be a German citizen living in Berlin in 1943 as the tide of war is turning against the Third Reich? What would it be like to live in a the city where bombs fall from the sky almost every clear night and you must flee to cellars or tunnels seeking safety? What would it be like to turn on the radio and listen to the propaganda arm of your government put the best face it can on lost battles in which thousands of your countrymen die, are captured or maimed, but then to turn down the volume, hoping you want be caught listening to the BBC report from the other side? What would it be like to be on the street when there is a raid and Jewish men and women, some your neighbors, are beaten and herded off to never be seen again? What would it be like to have to guard every word, knowing that your neighbor, co-worker, or family member may make a call that would result in your own arrest? What would it be like to be forced into making a choice between safely closing your mind’s eye to evil being done in the name of government or doing what, in your heart of hearts, you know is the right thing? Like a great time machine, “City Of Women” transports the reader back to that time and place and confronts him with these questions. Mr. Gillam did a tremendous job of reconstructing the Berlin of that time and populating it with characters you love, hate, or pity. This is truly a great read.
Berlin. 1943. The RAF bomb and the Jews hide. Life in a grim totalitarian regime is something Americans know little about. That is until the informed reader picks up a copy of David R. Gillham's brilliant debut novel City of Women! The chief character is an ordinary woman who will do extraordinary things during the course of the novel. Her name is Sigrid Schroeder. She lives with her irritating mother in law in a small apartment. Her husband Kaspar worked at a bank before being drafted and sent to combat on the dreaded Eastern Front in Russia. She has no children as the couple's only child died at birth during the time of the burning of the Jewish synagogues in November 1938. Sigrid works in a glum patent office on a part time basis. She often goes to the movies. One day she meets a young woman named Ericha. We learn that this person is involved in hiding Jews from the deadly Gestapo. Sigrid becomes involved in efforts to save the Jewish victims of Hitler's evil. She becomes a heroic person by novel's end. She in far from perfect! She has a Jewish lover Egon and a German officer lover named Wolfram. Gillham has constructed an exciting plot and is able to draw good character sketches of a variety of characters. The author knows the geography of Berlin and we learn what it was like to live in this tragic era. None of the characters are all good or bad but are seen as people trying to survive and save their skins in a climate of betrayal, danger and sudden death. The sex scenes are handled with skill and the dialogue is well done.
This novel is a impressive debut novel and the author is to be commended for a fine work of fiction. I believe it could be made into a fine film Recommended for lovers of historical fiction and the Second World War.
Sigrid Schroder endures the privations of wartime Berlin—husband fighting in Russia, mother-in-law all too present in her cramped apartment, Allied bombers forcing her to spend many nights sheltering underground, real cigarettes and coffee almost unobtainable, constant monitoring and hectoring by the authorities. And yet…there are movies, seen from the back row of the cinema. Under the beam of light from the projector, she meets a man, Egon. Egon’s dangerous vitality overwhelms her, and the affair leads her into forms of non-compliance and even resistance that astonish her even as she plunges boldly forward.

“City of Women” is the story of a woman’s awakening to her true self at a time and in a place where being true to yourself can get you killed. It’s also a story of how to live an authentic life when every garment is threadbare, every meal is insufficient, every pleasure is furtive, every hope is repressed, every communication is propaganda, every good action is suspect.

David Gillham carefully paces Sigrid’s ascent from apathy to heroism up to a slam-bang climax. Along the way, he parcels out the details of life in the Nazi capital at the beginning of the regime’s decline—like the swastika-shaped confetti distributed along the path of a “spontaneous” pro-Nazi demonstration, the children’s book illustrated with a caricature of a Jew, the shape of the brass cap on a cyanide capsule. Acclaimed author of wartime thrillers Alan Furst blurbed “City of Women” as “extraordinary,” and he was not wrong.
It is hard to believe that this is Mr. Gillham's first novel; it is THAT good. This is a very thought-provoking novel that is never once pedantic or didactic; it has a driving plot and unforgettably interesting and complex characters. Mr. Gillham weaves numerous moral questions through the book, ranging from marital fidelity in the time of war to courage in the face of personal danger; he doesn't answer most of these questions for us, but rather he lets (makes) us think about how we might act in similar circumstances. In other words, he's not afraid of moral ambiguities.

This is a very different book from Joseph Kanon's "The Good German," but they deal with similar issues and, at least in my opinion, both classics.

I greatly look forward to more books from Mr. Gillham. This one amazed me.