Winter Games

by Rachel Johnson

Moving between 1930s Germany and pre-crunch London, winter games is a dazzling tale of secrets, betrayal and two women, both caught up in the moment. She doesn't know it, but eighteen-year old Daphne Linden has a seat in the front row of history. Along with her best friend, Betsy Barton-Hill and a whole bevy of other young english upper class girls, Daphne is in Bavaria to improve her German, to go to the opera, to be 'finished'. It may be the Third Reich but another war is unthinkable and the girls are having the time of their lives. Aren't they? London, 2006, Seventy years later and Daphne's granddaughter, Francie Fitzsimon has all the boxes ticked: large flat, successful husband, cushy job writing up holistic spas etc. The hardest decision she has to make is where to go for brunch, until, that is, events conspire to send her on a quest to discover what really happened to her grandmother in Germany, all those years ago.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, World War II

326 pages, Hardcover

First published August 22, 2012

About the author

Rachel Johnson is a British editor, journalist, television presenter and author based in London. She lives in Notting Hill, London with her husband. They have three adult children.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrid book. The protagonist, as written, is a self-centered, shallow flibbertigibbet of a woman, a superannuated teenager with nothing between her ears, no heart and no soul. Her story is woven around that of her grandmother, a woman who does have a brain, a heart and a soul, possibly the only slender reason to read this unwholesome tale of overwhelming self-interest. Truthfully, I think the only reason I finished the book is because I had just finished a really good book (The Paris Wife), and the Boston Marathon bombing had just happened, and I didn't want anything too taxing. Or maybe too enjoyable.

Winter Games is without doubt the smarmiest piece of pseudo-literary women's interest waste of trees I've read in a long, long time. Maybe ever. Spend enough time with main character Francie and you'll wonder what day the world will go spinning off its axis from the unbalanced and unthinking approach to life and love she embodies if, as one might fear, it is true to life for what one can only assume is a Gen X. No humour, no growth, no interesting turns of phrase, even, to indicate why Penguin might have thought this garbage was a good idea.

Read it only if you've got nothing better on hand or....oh, wait. There is no or.

[Josie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was terrible. Francie was the most revolting, obnoxious MC I've come across in a long while. She steamrollered her way through the story with no regard for other characters' feelings, intent on finding out the "truth" about her past to the point of bullying elderly people into telling her everything they could remember about that period. I suspect Francie may have been a self-insert (blonde journalist researches a story, decides at the end to turn it into a novel) which hardly flatters Rachel Johnson, but since she's the kind of woman who can't even be bothered to smile in her author photo, maybe she is a real-life Francie. I shudder to think.

I also hated Francie's ridiculous posturing. All that talk about going to "chichi delis" and living in a modernist flat which her friends had nicknamed "White Cube". Really? Because I can't imagine anyone saying, "Shall we pop over to White Cube later?" rather than "Shall we pop over to your place later?" but apparently those are the kinds of friends Francie has.

Francie has dilemmas. Such as where to eat: the Expensive Place, or the Beyond Expensive Place? Cue pages and pages of description about each place and why they both suck, filled as they are with bankers and celebrities, snotty waiters, and overpriced food. Francie hates both places, but eventually decides she'll eat at the Expensive Place. Which begs the question: why? Why not go somewhere you actually ENJOY? Or why not just have a fucking weetabix at home, wearing your pyjamas, instead of going out to eat breakfast. Sorry, brunch. I really don't get it. It's not like she was meeting friends or anything. She just had to go somewhere to "be seen". (It's a tough life, being a journalist.)

And the affair. Oh, the affair. If it can even be called that. Got to admit, I cracked up laughing at this bit (although I doubt the author intended it to be so hilarious):

Francie had stopped thinking about Nathan -- well, she'd stopped thinking about him all the time. She'd sent him a text, saying, 'It's over,' and he'd sent one back, saying, 'What's over xx.' She had stared at this for a while. Only two xx. For some reason, that hurt a lot.

I'm avoiding talking about Daphne, Francie's grandmother, because I'm still absolutely furious about the ignorant rape comments made by the author.

P.S. Why on earth would you have a character called Edward Cullen. I mean, seriously?

[Alice Lacey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This really was an awful awful book.... Very unpleasant characters, terrible label dropping & feel slightly ashamed that I finished it! It should definitely be one to avoid by all. A shame because it promised so much!

[Simón · Rating 1 out of 5]

While the plot itself was occasionally engaging, the cardboard cutout array of characters (not least the thoroughly unlikeable protagonist Francie) and the creaking prose ensured that I did not care in the least for the outcome.

The attitude displayed towards rape was reprehensible - "I'm sure nowadays everyone would call it rape and get into a frightful stew." Likewise the criticism of Nazism was lukewarm ("If you tuned out the Third Reich, it was all very Heidi").

I suspect I won't be perusing any more of this writer's oeuvre.

[Jennifer Simpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book would have benefited from dropping the contemporary narrative and focusing more on the detail and characters of 1936 who were ultimately much more interesting than the modern day characters who felt a bit half-thought-out.
I think Rachel Johnson should have been that bit braver and pushed ahead with a period piece rather than wedging in her comfort zone of modern middle class Boden based angst which is obviously where she feels most comfortable.

[A.E. Shaw · Rating 1 out of 5]

With the basic premise being the split in storytelling between the life of the grandmother in pre-WWII Germany and the granddaughter in 2006 London, the lengths this book goes to to draw parallels between the stories are so exhausting and tired that by the end of it, there's no twist or reveal, just a gentle sense of relief that it's finished.

The illustrations of Germany were interesting enough, but the efforts to illustrate the naivety of the characters in that world seemed exaggerated and, accordingly, gave it a slightly peculiar feel. Conversely, the 2006-era stuff was so rammed with brand names and the phrase "chichi deli" that, however much it might've been intended to be a satire of pre-recession Britain, it came across as so much nauseating rubbish by the end.

I wanted to enjoy this book a lot more than I did, and fear that the cover/blurb of it gave an idea of a much more sophisticated and complex work than this actually was. A case of mistaken expectation, too.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has a very attractive cover. I have enjoyed some of Rachel Johnson's newspaper articles. The back cover had under PRAISE FOR A DIARY OF A LADY the quote 'surprisingly brilliant' A A Gill and PRAISE FOR NOTTING HELL 'Shiveringly brilliant' Jilly Cooper.
I made it to page 48. I can go no further. The characters are not people whose company I would seek out; indeed, I would make serious efforts to avoid Francie's company. I found her particularly rebarbitive. I have lots of other books in the piling system and I am getting older; I do not have time to read any more of this.
I have abandoned this to read some work papers to expunge it from my mind.
I will stick to reading RJ's newspaper articles as I find them funny. I'm sure that others will find this an OK read, I found the whiny Francie intolerable.
If you like SATC movie, you might enjoy this.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really disappointed with this one, the description sounded intriguing and the cover enticing but I really didn't like the writing style and couldn't engage with either the characters or the storyline and so unfortunately it didn't pass my 50 page test. Life is too short to struggle reading books that are not enjoyable and therefore it was abandoned. Definitely not the book for me but someone else might enjoy it.

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

easy going read but nothing really special reminded me of the return by Victoria heslop the plot seems quite easy going of grandmother going to hitler's Germany for the 1936 wintergames and meets a few german men but felt the storyline could of been stronger and more compelling

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dire. There is a good book to be written about innocent young English girls in 1930s Germany, but this isn't it. Very unsympathetic characters, a plot full of holes. How did Penguin ever publish this?

[Colin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have given up on this book. It's just a bit crappy really. Life's too short. It's full of product placement.

[Caro Ayre · Rating 1 out of 5]

Over long sentences and an abundance of product placements spoilt an interesting story about a fascinating period in history. The modern day story line let the side down.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Vicki · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted something brain dead to read during lockdown, and this certainly was brain dead. Over-written, needlessly complex sentences clumsily wrought around an endless list of consumer labels and brand names. If product placement was an author, this would be it. Perhaps the semiotics resonated with the 1% who lead equally vacuous lifestyles as ascribed to the protagonist, but as they’re likely to read nothing more textual than a glossy magazine, such speculation is moot.

In brief: vacuous journalists are far wealthier than their work justifies. Older people may have interesting hinterlands - including naive nazism-lite, premarital sex (who knew? The horror...) and privilege. Everyone is having deep and meaningless sex (but only heterosex) with everyone else. But girl friends matter more than lovers. And happy endings, if ambiguous, matter more than truth, even if identity suddenly matters for no reason other than suddenly making a nonsensical ending magically have something gesturing vaguely in the direction of a reason. I suppose at least that prevented it from being utterly predictable, all though by that stage, the cognitive dissonance between cloyingly twee writing and actual nazism had short-circuited any live neural pathways left in my brain.

This reads as a CV which proclaims: I studied at Oxford! I know stuff about Oxford! I live a life of privilege! I know stuff about brands, and labels, and what people with money enjoy! I worked in the world of vacuous glossy magazines for women of privilege! I know stuff about how meaningless all that is, and how much money such oxygen thieves get paid, and the kind of lifestyles they maintain. Oh, and I’ve had sex. Not great sex, mind, but sex, nonetheless! And ultimately I believe that all women really just want a husband and a baby. And a girlfriend to gossip with. Oh, and the right labels and brand names, and the right address. And a little bit of historic nazism? Oh, somewhere in the past there’s a Jewish ancestor, so none of that counts really.

[Martina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Johnson has managed to create two completely annoying and unidentifiable main characters for her story. The sheer naivety of them had me wincing. While a bit more understandable with the grandmother protagonist as set in an earlier time frame, there is no excuse for the granddaughter. Johnson relies heavily on repetition and clichés of both decades. I daresay if you go through the trouble of writing a book, you may as well have it properly edited and make sure the sentences make sense and the German injections are correct. Neither seems to have been done. It is a shame that she feels the need to describe everything; it makes the book very slow and boring. Do I really need to know that as soon as she smells disinfectant, she actually sees it hanging in a corner? I think the reader is quite capable to come to that conclusion as well. And isn’t it quite normal for hospitals and nursing homes to smell that way?In a lot of her descriptions there seems to be no point, other than lengthening the book.

On the bright side, Johnson ever so slightly touches on a few interesting thoughts towards the end of the book and I would have liked to see them developed further. She raises the fact that many in England were not aware of the crimes that were happening during the war or did not want to think about it. She touches on the many English who were indeed in support of German regime by either not knowing better, sharing some of the ideologies or simply being ignorant. Unfortunately the books stays shallow and doesn't dare to dive deeper into these questions.

[Caterina · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was pretty bad...
How can you take an exciting story of the past, which takes place in one of History's darkest times, and make it totally shallow, by adding a snotty, snob, annoying descendant of the main character?
Every time I read Francie's way of thinking, I was either furious or disgusted: from her points of view to her life's choices, she is one of the worst characters I have read in a book --and she's meant to be the "good" one! Which editor thought that this book was worthy of publishing? By Penguin, nonetheless!
I totally sympathize with the one's who hated the book. For those who are about to read it without having seen the warnings, my condolences.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite what I expected from the description on the back cover. I was expecting some sort of mystery centred on the Nazis hierarchy and the Mitfords, not a domestic puzzle involving hidden family secrets. I have to say all of the characters seemed selfish, with little empathy for their nearest and dearest. Certainly not people I would like to meet in real life. Still, it was interesting enough to make me want to read the book to the end.

[Damaskcat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francie visits her grandmother Daphne in a home but she is more concerned with her own life that she is with her grandmother’s life which is now drawing to a close. Francie is a journalist working on a magazine and during a work trip to Germany she sees a picture in a museum of Daphne with Hitler in the 1930s. Naturally she is curious and wants to know more.

The story is told in alternate chapters – Francie in 2006 and Daphne in 1936 – and it shows how different life was then when compared to the twenty first century. As Francie struggles to make sense of her heritage and to make a success of her own life she becomes more and more interested in what did happen to her grandmother in 1936 – the year her own father was born.

This book grew on me. After the first hundred pages I was considering giving up but something kept me reading and I was glad in the end that I had done so. I did not take to Francie and found her a very selfish person, always considering how events related to her – getting annoyed when she thought Daphne was going to die before she could talk to her; hearing of a flat for sale in her own block and wanting a friend to buy it; being attracted to a work colleague. I liked Daphne as a character, though she too had her faults.


I did get a bit bored with the brand placement in the 2006 episodes and felt they rather over-egged the pudding. It was obvious from the reader’s first glimpse of Francie and her husband, Gus that they lived a very fashionable life.

Overall this is an enjoyable read though I found it difficult to chose whether to award it three or four stars. As I enjoyed the last third of the book and read it at a sitting I came to the conclusion it warranted four stars. I felt some of the writing was a little slapdash but overall it was a good story and the two parts dovetailed well.

[Katy · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting premise - travel writer Frannie goes to do a piece from a ski resort in Germany, only to discover a photo of her grandmother as a young woman, with Hitler. It turns out that her grandmother, Daphne, has been sent over to Germany in 1936 to improve her German, and visited the winter olympics. Frannie starts trying to research the details for a book, and the story interweaves between modern day and Daphne back in the 1930s. Which would have been fine, except that the author also felt the need to make Frannie "interesting" by creating a complicated love life that introdued 2-dimensional characters and completely predictable entanglements, and I was much more interested in Daphne's story. So 50% of the book was good, 50% was less so. I could have lived with a lot less of Frannie and her woes.

[Lady Drinkwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book set in two time periods. The present day part of it iis contemporary chick lit, however it is very well done, with funny scenes and characters who are both believable and likeable. The protaganist is researching a photograph of her grandmother during the Winter Games in Hitler's Germany and her investigations are interspersed with her grandmother's own story. When the book is set in the past it really shines and is literally a breath of fresh air. I felt as if I was there in the Bavarian mountains experiencing the beginnings of nazi Germany. The book has a very light touch and is thoroughly enjoyable.

[Irene Palfy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is simply bad. Not only because it's just poorly written and lacks likeable characters. It also uses German expressions simply in a wrong way - or just makes them up. (Not to mention the incorrect spelling) that really left me puzzled. Besides: frequent namedropping (Nigella here - Gwyneth there...) And epic description of unimportant but very posh details just doesn't add any class. Oh and: a girl in the end enjoying to be raped? I love the cover though - and the idea of the plot could have worked..

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an OK book which I think improved as it went on. The subject matter was interesting and, having read Rachel Johnson's account of her first year as editor of "The Lady", I thought the writing would be more sparkling than it was. However, it was worth reading and did give an alternative (if clearly misguided) view of how things were in 1936 in Bavaria at the time of the Winter Olympics for a very small social group.

[Miz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Its a shame that the book seemed to have a split personality. The plot running through the 1940s had a lot more depth to it, the story had more of a purpose. Although the main character in the noughties became more likeable, she appeared to quite emotionless and to be honest, a bit dim in some respect.

[Linda Murray · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh dear ... dreadful. I kept reading to the end because I hoped for some redemption or enlightenment in the main contemporary character. But no, she remained as shallow as her minimalist brand-laden London flat. A literary visit to Germany in the 1930's that does nothing to stir or add insight to prejudices and stereotypes. Sorry I wasted a week reading it.

[Lynette Twaddle]

Not the best written book I have ever read... trying to do too many different things as once. The bits set in the 30s are pretty much fine, but the modern bits are awful and have too many brand-names shoe-horned in.

[Nossamael · Rating 3 out of 5]

malgré les critiques négatives, j'ai trouvé que c'était un livre sympa qui dénonce mine de rien certains problème de société pas si ancien sous couvert d'une page difficile de notre histoire. Franchement lecture agréable.

[Karen Boydell · Rating 1 out of 5]

The best thing about the book was the cover coordinated with the bedroom decor. The cover, blurb and comments did a fantastic marketing job. But the book did not live up to expectations. I feel duped.
Please read the other one/two star reviews I cannot improve on what has already been said.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult book to get into nearly gave up but then started to enjoy

[Tracey Wilde · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a missed opportunity. Brilliant germ of an idea which was not explored.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very Mitfordesque account of Nazi Germany. The modern story gets in the way a bit and seems silly but dovetails in the final chapter. Frothy reading.