Widowland

 

 I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Widowland

Author: C.J. Carey

Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark

Release Date: 8.9.22

Publisher’s Summary 

To control the past, they edited history. To control the future, they edited literature.

LONDON, 1953. Thirteen years have passed since England surrendered to the Nazis and formed a Grand Alliance with Germany. It was forced to adopt many of its oppressive ideologies, one of which was the strict classification of women into hierarchical groups based on the perceived value they brought to society.

Rose Ransom, a member of the privileged Geli class, remembers life from before the war but knows better than to let it show. She works for the Ministry of Culture, rewriting the classics of English literature to ensure there are no subversive thoughts that will give women any ideas.

Outbreaks of insurgency have been seen across the country with graffiti made up of seditious lines from forbidden works by women painted on public buildings. Suspicion has fallen on Widowland, the run-down slums where childless women over fifty have been banished. Rose is given the dangerous task of infiltrating Widowland to find the source of the rebellion before the Leader arrives in England for the Coronation ceremony of King Edward VIII and Queen Wallis. Will Rose follow her instructions and uncover the criminals? Or will she fight for what she knows in her heart is right?

With wit, suspense, and sheer originality, C. J. Carey has crafted an eerie story of “what if” that explores how some systems of female control cherished by the Nazis would have developed in a German-occupied England.

My Review

In this alternate history, the entire female population is classified into hierarchical order. Geli Girls are the most elite, Klaras are "fertile women who had produced, ideally, four or more children," professional women are Lenis, and women in caring professions are Paulas. Then come the Magda shop and factory workers, the Gretl houseworkers, and finally the Friedas, a nickname from "Friedhöfsfrauen—cemetery women. These were widows and spinsters over fifty who had no children and no reproductive purpose and who did not serve a man. There was nothing lower than that." A woman's classification determines everything from her profession, to her marriage options, to her calorie allocation: "2,613 for Gelis, 2,020 for Lenis, 2,006 for Magdas, Gretls 1,800, and Friedas, 879." 

The Leader will be visiting soon and political graffiti (lines from forbidden works of literature written by women) keeps showing up in or near libraries. Ministry of Culture worker (classic texts "editor") Rose Ransom is sent on a top-secret mission to the Widowlands to flush out the rebels. There are hundreds of thousands of women in the Widowlands, every inch of the city is under constant surveillance and she is second-guessing everyone and everything she thought she knew.

This historical fiction novel was heavy on British and German history and it is easy to understand see how all that knowledge comes through in the text. Author C. J. Carey has also written "several novels under the name Jane Thynne, based around women in prewar and wartime Germany, with a particular focus on the way the regime dictated their daily lives." In the closing acknowledgments, I found the following line especially poignant: "Sowing division, turning citizens against each other, controlling the media, and restricting what people read are the skillsets of dictators everywhere." She also pointed out that "Although the setting is fictional, many figures in this novel existed, and the story is based on the genuine SS collection task force established by Alfred Rosenberg to loot Europe’s libraries for books between 1939 and 1945. Tens of millions of books were plundered from libraries in every country of Europe and brought back to several archives, including Rosenberg’s Amt Schrifttumspflege in Berlin. Rosenberg’s approach to controlling literature went far beyond book burnings, and the team he established aimed to adjust certain aspects of history to reflect National Socialist beliefs about the past."

I am now anxiously anticipating the sequel to Widowland, which the author confirmed is in production.