Florals—for spring? Groundbreaking.
I’ve read a number of historical fiction books in my day, but, having finished the Lilac Girls yesterday, I’ve been thinking recently about The Rose Code, a book I finished about the same time last year. Books with floral titles for spring? Groundbreaking.
The Rose Code opens in 1947, on the eve of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s wedding. Seven years after they’ve been torn apart by a betrayal, three women are forced to reunite to solve an encrypted letter that may uncover the mystery that ruined them.
The three women in question are: Osla, a wealthy socialite (and Prince Philip’s first girlfriend); Beth, a mousy girl with a brilliant mind for math; and Mab, an Easter Londoner desperate for a wealthy husband to help propel her family out of poverty. They join forces in 1940, when the three of them answer a call to come work at Bletchley Park. Osla leverages her fluent German to work as a linguist; Mab works on Alan Turing’s (yes, he makes multiple appearances) bombe machines; and Beth works as a codebreaker, one of just a few females amongst a group of men. When one of them is revealed as a traitor, she swears she’s been framed.
A number of elements of The Rose Code are rooted in reality. Osla (whose last name is Kendall in the book), is based on Osla Benning, Prince Philip’s first girlfriend, who did work as a linguist in Bletchley’s fourth hut. Beth is, in author Kate Quinn’s words, “a fictional composite of two women.” Her brilliant achievements are based on those of Mavis Lever, who was not just one of the park’s best female codebreakers, but one of the best codebreakers bar none. She broke the enigma ciphers that thwarted an Italian attack on the UK navy and helped lead the Allies to victory at D-Day (did I mention she was only 19? Seriously, read the obituary above). {SEMI-SPOILER ALERT} Beth’s fate in the book, however, is not based on Mavis’ life but of another nameless female codebreaker, who was institutionalized after suffering a nervous breakdown once her affair with a fellow codebreaker was revealed and her colleagues feared she would spill park secrets in her state.
It’s rare that I love all three characters in a book featuring multiple perspectives, but when it came to The Rose Code, I did. I flew through this book and have recommended to everyone I knew, whether historical fiction fans or not.
This spring, Lilac Girls was my floral WW2 historical fiction novel of choice. While I didn’t love it as much as I did The Rose Code, I’d still recommend it to anyone interested in the genre. Much like The Rose Code, it’s a multi-character narrative, though the stories of these three women don’t intersect until close to the book’s end.
Lilac Girls follows three women as well. First, there’s Kasia, a Polish Catholic girl working in the underground at the start of the war, until she’s taken to Ravensbrück, an all-female concentration camp that the Nazis euphemistically refer to as a “reeducation camp,” alongside her mother and sister. Then there’s Caroline, the charitable, Chapin-educated socialite working with the French consulate to send care packages to orphaned children. Finally, there’s Herta Oberheuser, the aspiring German doctor who answers a call to work at Ravensbrück with the Nazis — and doesn’t seem to struggle to rationalize the inhuman operations she undertakes at Hitler’s behest.
Martha Hall Kelly takes the reader through a harrowing journey at Ravensbrück, both from Kasia fierce and resolute perspective and Dr. Oberheuser’s chillingly detached one. It’s hard to understand how Caroline’s perspective will intersect with the other two, but it all comes together with a satisfying conclusion at the end, which, thankfully, is rooted in truth. It’s a more intense, difficult read than The Rose Code, which is invigorating to read, but it reveals even more of the atrocities of World War II (to me, at least, I had no idea about the sulfonamide experiments at Ravensbrück until I read the author’s note), things that, no matter how difficult for us to read, are crucial for us to remember, especially now, as the numbers of living Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle rapidly. Like The Rose Code, it’s one of those books that had me compelled to learn more about the real story behind the fictionalized version, and I’m already itching to read more about the rabbits.