Review - The Nightingale

The Nightingale
by Kristin Hannah
release date 02/03/2015
593 pages
Chapter length:  short
5 out of 5 stars

According to the publisher, "Despite their differences, sisters Vianne and Isabelle have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris, while Vianne is content with life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. But when the Second World War strikes, Antoine is sent off to fight, and Vianne finds herself isolated so Isabelle is sent by their father to help her."

As the war progresses, the sisters' relationship and strength are tested. With life changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Vianne and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible, as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions."

Going into this book, I was unsure what to expect.  From my experience with The Great Alone, I found Kristin Hannah to be an absolutely beautiful writer, but the book was much too dark for my liking (you can read my review here).  I was worried that The Nightingale would be more of the same, but it has such fabulous reviews that I couldn't resist giving it a chance.

The official summary doesn't give too much of a clue as to what this book is truly about, so I'll do my best to summarize without spoiling anything:  The Nightingale follows two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, in their separate but intertwined journeys starting shortly before WWII comes to France, their struggles during the war, and their lives after.  Vianne and Isabelle are two very different characters.  Vianne's plight is learning how to live peacefully under the German occupation, while Isabelle joins the French Resistance movement and does her best to secretly fight the occupying troops.  

Throughout the book, we see the characters confront the moral dilemmas that war presents:  Can people be both good and bad at the same time?  If you do something truly terrible with good intentions, where does that leave you as a human?  Hannah is a master at using deeply layered characters to answer these intense questions.

This book has many dark moments, as it would be impossible to tell a story about WWII without them.  I did find however, that these somber parts of the book felt authentic, which is what was missing for me from The Great Alone.  At no time did it feel like the author was abusing her characters by gratuitously putting them into terrible situations.  As many people can attest, these terrible situations were a reality for people living in occupied Europe at this time.

While this is not a nonfiction book, I really enjoyed the historical aspect of it.  Growing up, I was in French classes in school, and took several French history classes in college.  The Nightingale was really fascinating for me, because it discusses in great detail what my classes skipped over.  Usually when we discussed WWII, Vichy France was only briefly mentioned before moving on to cover the heroes of the Resistance in more detail.  Even though this is a novel, it's the first instance in which I have heard just how brutal the occupying regime was, and exactly how deeply this hurt France and her people.

The Nightingale also covers Vianne and Isabelle's lives in the months directly after the war ended.  As students of history, our books often leave off after VE Day.  The reality is that, for people on the ground in Europe, their fight to regain their normal lives was just beginning.  The end of the war was not the end of the suffering for many people.

In the end, we don't get a fairy-tale ending from the author.  What we do get is an ending that satisfyingly tied up loose ends and left me in tears.

I borrowed this book from the library, but I'm hoping to purchase my own copy soon, so I can read this book over and over.  I really cannot recommend this book more highly!