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Jessica Shattuck

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Website

http://www.jessicashattuck.com

Twitter

jessicashattuck

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fiction

Member Since

October 2009

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Jessica Shattuck is the New York Times Bestselling author of the novels Last House (forthcoming from William Morrow May 2024), The Women in the Castle, The Hazards of Good Breeding, a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, and Perfect Life. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Glamour, Mother Jones, Wired, and The Believer, among others. She received her MFA from Columbia University.

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Popular Answered Questions

I found that you explored the questions about "...how Germans could have let the Holocaust happen-- how so many could have been, at least in the beginning, enthusiastic about Hitler..." in this book, well. You also broached the subject of forgiveness. Was it intentional that you seemed to stop short of letting a character be able to forgive themselves, while not forgetting events? OR did I miss the one(s) that did?

Jessica Shattuck What an interesting question! Thank you. I try to think about that time less in terms of "forgiveness" than truthfulness and understanding. Sometimes …moreWhat an interesting question! Thank you. I try to think about that time less in terms of "forgiveness" than truthfulness and understanding. Sometimes the idea of squeezing everything through the lens of "can I-- or anyone else-- forgive this or that action?" feels like it limits our ability to understand the how and why it happened. I guess I felt that the character you are talking about (Ania?) would have felt it was not her place to forgive or not forgive herself. That she just had to be as honest with herself as possible.(less)

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I found the stark reality details you present in 'The Women in the Castle' hard to absorb. Would I be correct in assuming that you did so, to highlight the choices the complex characters had to make?

Jessica Shattuck I tried to be as faithful as possible to the realities of the time and the details of day to day life. It was definitely a stark time. So in as much a…moreI tried to be as faithful as possible to the realities of the time and the details of day to day life. It was definitely a stark time. So in as much as those realities highlighted the choices the characters had make, it was less a conscious action on my part than it was an organic outcome of my research, but I was definitely very interested exploring those choices.(less)

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Jessica Shattuck’s books

Average rating: 3.83 · 66,799 ratings · 7,689 reviews · 9 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Women in the Castle 3.85 avg rating — 63,608 ratings — published 2017 — 69 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Last House 3.64 avg rating — 1,413 ratings — published 2024	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Hazards of Good Breeding 3.10 avg rating — 946 ratings — published 2003 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century by Jenny Minton Quigley (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Emily Mortimer, Stacy Schiff (Goodreads Author) 3.98 avg rating — 452 ratings — published 2021 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Perfect Life 2.95 avg rating — 447 ratings — published 2009 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ha-Nashim ba-Tira (B-141-3483) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Power Lines: Nine Stories 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Little Green 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Neal's Yard Remedies Healing Foods: Eat Your Way to a Healthier Life 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Jessica Shattuck is currently reading

The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead (Goodreads Author)

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Sep 18, 2016 05:46PM

Quotes by Jessica Shattuck (?)

“Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted -- and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion. He will think of it every time he goes to a museum or a concert or a play with a long line of people waiting to get inside.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

tags: history-of-mankind, music, world-war-2

16 likes

“For so long Marianne and Albrecht and many of their friends had known Hitler was a lunatic, a leader whose lowbrow appeal to people's most selfish, self-pitying emotions and ignorance was an embarrassment for their country.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

tags: country-pride, government

13 likes

“In the future, Martin will recall this night as the first time -- and one of the only times -- he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief and guilt.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

tags: history, world-war-2

9 likes

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Polls

November Side Read Nominations ~ Final Poll

The Women in the Castle

by Jessica Shattuck

15 votes, 30.0%

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II

by Liza Mundy

11 votes, 22.0%

There There

by Tommy Orange

10 votes, 20.0%

The Time Traveler's Wife

by Audrey Niffenegger

10 votes, 20.0%

Exit West

by Mohsin Hamid

2 votes, 4.0%

In The Shadow of 10,000 Hills

by Jennifer Haupt

2 votes, 4.0%

50 total votes

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