Lilac Girls

By Martha Hall Kelly

Ballentine     2017

502 pages     Literary

Lilac Girls tells a World War II story from the viewpoints of three young women: a New York socialite, Caroline; Kasia, a Polish girl, who was a political prisoner in Ravensbruck, the only major Nazi concentration camp for women in Germany; and Herta, a German doctor at Ravensbruck. The three women are connected within the narrative, although their connection is not obvious at first.

The novel begins with the invasion of Poland in 1939. Each of the three women are caught, in one way or another. Caroline works as a volunteer at the French Consulate and she is in love with a married French actor named Paul Rodierre. He returns home to France as the war becomes more threatening. Caroline is extremely well connected, and her “old money” is used to provide clothing and other goods for French families. However, she longs for Paul, and when it is finally safe, she heads to France to find him. When she arrives in France, she becomes consumed with the story of Ravensbruck, and decides to bring the victims to the United States for medical treatment.

Kasia is caught after having carried out a secret mission for the Polish Resistance. Along with her mother and sister as well as several of her neighbors in their Polish town, they are sent to Ravensbruck in Germany, where they become Nazi medical experiments. They are part of a group called the “Rabbits.” The medical experiments are terrible, and Kasia and her sister suffer terribly.

Herta is one of the doctors carrying out the medical experiments. She is not a very well-developed character, but through her we see how the atrocities were conducted on young women like Kasia.

The narrative is quite uneven. Some of my displeasure may have been because I am not very fond of stories where there are chapters dedicated to each character, the format Kelly used in Lilac Girls. That being said, the story line is compelling. It is incredible to me that there can be so many books with so many fascinating stories about World War II. Kasia’s story is particularly difficult to read because of the brutality foisted upon her and the people she knew. I wish that Herta’s story could have been fleshed out more, because I struggled to understand how a woman of her intelligence could get sucked into the atrocities that she committed.

There are pictures at the end of the book that alert us to the fact that Caroline and Herta were real people and the author discovered their story and the stories of the Rabbits after she visited Caroline’s summer home in Connecticut. One reviewer suggests that this is a “groundbreaking category of fiction that re-examines history from a female point of view. It’s smart, thoughtful and also just an old-fashioned good read.” The New York Times reviewer, on the other hand, felt that the characters were so poorly drawn as to be stereotypes. That reviewer says the book “sinks under the weight of its own ambition."

I do have to say in conclusion that our book club discussion of Lilac Girls was quite good. We were able to pick through the poorly written parts and were eager to discuss our interpretation of the book and the historical significance of the events described. That, of course, is the important part of a book club discussion, rather than to nit-pick the inconsistencies of the writing. It is, after all, Kelly’s first book. Apparently, she is writing a prequel which takes place during World War I.
 

Martha Hall Kelly’s website with pictures of some of the Rabbits.