A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France
By: Caroline Moorehead / Narrated By: Wanda McCaddon
Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
Takes a while to get rolling but then picks up speed and never lets go
I was listening to A Train in Winter for a second time, kinda a refresher, kinda a way to relive Part 2 of the book, when one of my Coffee Gals (I work on a dorm with teenaged girls) heard some of this and asked what it was all about. Well, I’d already been a trifle shocked and dismayed around 9/11/2019 when I discovered that my girls had no inkling as to what September 11th, 2001 meant, but I was UTTerly baffled to learn that the Holocaust and WWII were baaaaarely covered in History classes. Of COURSE, I finally thought to myself, there’s just toooo much history on this planet to cover aaaall of it in-depth. Still, after listening to this audiobook, with its tales of courage, endurance, and friendship, I was saddened that the sacrifices made by these remarkable women pretty much have been forgotten.
But first lemme get back to the “blurb” for this audiobook: It very MUCH takes a while to get interesting. Part 1, which is hours upon HOURS, is so slow, with this, that, the other, women mentioned and then dismissed that it rather feels like you’re getting drizzled on by a storm system that is huge, is definitely getting you wet, but still hasn’t quite done anything. Yes, Part 1 is a tad frustrating for that reason in that we don’t really get to know any of the women; all we hear is about the day to day activities of Resistance workers in Vichy France (And don’t even get me started on the Vichy!). It’s truly awesome what women, from the very young to the very old, did to promote old French values, to try to bring down the reign of the Nazis. They were couriers, printers, they secreted Jews out of the country, they hid downed Allied airmen in their barns. They did all sorts of things, most of which, after the war, was looked down upon as being far less glorious than the image of the male Resistance fighter sabotaging trains or in hand-to-hand combat. Even the few women who survived the camps/the war looked down upon their contributions, saying all these things, quite simply, were what women would normally do.
There’s a kind of Part 1.5 where the women come together in Gestapo jails, and it’s here that we get to really see the women as individuals, learn their strengths, their weaknesses, see how they came to support each other through sharing burdens, even sharing humor. So FINally, we get women to root for, to wish the best for.
To be completely and unutterably terrified for as 230 of them are gathered and put on cattle cars to go to the death camps. Part 2 chronicles the absolute brutality that these women survived, and I dunno about you, but I rather fancy myself Not A Novice when it comes to Holocaust studies, and memoirs. But I found the writing of what the women went through to be stellar as I was devastated, little by little, by how each woman suffered and either gave up, or just simply died. They were tormented and debased, but this is such a great story of how they leaned on each other and helped each other through.
Wanda McCaddon narrates this so very well. Initially, I kept seeing characters from other works she’s narrated, some of the “fluffier” forms of fiction that I’m fond of, but soon she absolutely brought this horrible world to life, voicing each woman’s recollections with grave pathos, wretched disbelief. I must say, however, that I don’t speak French at all, so I can’t say whether her accent was on or off, but she seemed to flow through the French phrases with fluid ease. (Also, that was indeed one thing: At times, French is spoken but we’re not given the translation but are left to fend for ourselves, struggling to figure it out in context as the narrative merrily flows on by). I’m pretty sure that following this, should I listen to Ms. McCaddon in the future, I’ll be remembering unwashed, skeletal women, propping each other up during endless roll calls, shivering and dying in freezing muddy slush.
The book ends in a rather depressing fashion as yes, the oh so few surviving women are overjoyed to have lived to see liberation, but their lives that follow are anything but joyous. It turns out that when you live in such harrowing circumstances, your senses have to become numb in order to make it through each day, hour, minute, second to second. And it’s hard to cry when you’ve lived through so many, many losses. Plus, many of these women left children behind, only to come back into those lives as complete strangers, accepting formal handshakes from children they’d dearly love to throw their arms around in loving embraces.
And that France and the world forgot about them? In a bid for national reconciliation, France didn’t want to remember what they’d done to their own. And families didn’t want to hear the hell the women lived through, preferring to rehash their own difficulties during the occupation instead.
Still, even tho’ I was pretty bummed by the ending, and even tho’ the first part didn’t wow me, I’m very, very glad that this was a (VERY) close second as a Tell Me What’s Next Listen.
It was an honor to listen to, and to say that it made me proud of my gender?
Well, ‘nuff said…!
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.