Winter Games

I read about Winter Games by Rachel Johnson months ago, in a British article that also referenced Debs at War. For some reason, I thought Winter Games was also non-fiction, so I was rather surprised when I realized I'd embarked upon a fiction read instead. So. Winter Games was inspired by the author's grandmother's time in Germany in the 1930s, where all the best British families sent their daughters to be finished in the years between the wars. The Kaiser was, after all, Queen Victoria's grandson, so surely the Germans couldn't be all bad. Or so the thinking went.

The book is essentially two stories. The first,which is told in the first person voice of 18-year-old Daphne Linden, is the story of two British girls (Daphne and her best friend, Betsy) who are sent to Germany to hone their German skills and cavort with the aristocracy, British and German alike, in 1936. The second, told in the voice of Francie Fitzsimon, is the story of Francie's 2006 quest to uncover what, exactly, happened to her grandmother - Daphne - in those German months.

The stories are carefully intertwined, though until the end, Daphne's story clearly carries the novel. Daphne's story is rich in historical interest and detail, rich conversation, and characters who, if not fully developed, are at least sympathetic and believable. Francie, on the other hand, struck me as an insipid twit whom I might strangle if I met in real life. (She had way too much in common with the protagonist from The Spoiler for my liking.) Francie carries on - and on - about whether to have an affair with her boss, her latest internet purchases, and the quality of the espresso various machines produce. She is irritating and I only grudgingly warmed to her - slightly, only so slightly - in the last chapter. I would have skipped her chapters entirely, except that it is so artfully woven into Daphne's as the book progresses that to do so would have been impossible.

At it's heart, Winter Games is a good mystery as much as anything, though it took a rather darker turn than I would have expected, or liked (and which I certainly hope did not figure into Johnson's grandmother's own stories). It's a quick read, and yet one more perspective on Nazi Germany that left me scratching my head at how the world could be so willfully blind for so long. In the end, I liked the book more than I expected and was glad I'd soldiered on after realizing it wasn't quite what I expected.