Vindicated by History: Critics savaged the album on its initial release, but later praised it as Reed's masterpiece.
The Novel
Ensemble Dark Horse: Jewish socialite Miriam Goldberg is only in Detta's flashback, and mostly just in the first third of it, but her friendship with Detta and Refuge in Audacity"The Reason You Suck" Speech to several Nazi sympathizers right before fleeing the country are some of the brightest parts of the novel.
Just Here for Godzilla: Many reviewers consider the flashbacks to the victims' adventures in World War II to be a bigger draw than the larger, connecting plotline of the hunt for the killer who brings those compelling tales to such abrupt and tragic ends.
The Woobie: All of the women suffer plenty of horror and tragedy in the Nazi era even before being brutally raped and murdered after the war, especially Helga (given all the desperation she feels over her son's fate, how he ultimately dies anyway, and how she feels the most terror and fear while dying), Detta (when she finds out the British diplomat she loves is pumping her for information and sees the Russians take away her parents and the SS take away her brother who she then mercy kills in rapid succession) and Lene (whose parents and siblings died in a gas leak right as she was paying to move them somewhere nicer, and who is forced to sleep with other men by her husband, who also threatens her life and that of the man she really loves).
