The Nightingale
FRANCE, 1939
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.
Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.
With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France–a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
Review: This novel tells the story of two sisters caught up in World War II who both become part of the French Resistance. Distanced by the early death of their mother and their father's inability to cope, sisters Vianne and Isabelle see the world in very different terms. Vianne lives in the small village of Carriveau with her husband and daughter Sophie while Isabelle is a rebellious teenager who is constantly running away from school. When the war reaches France, Vianne is forced to tell her husband goodbye as he heads to fight at the front and then must live with the enemy when a Nazi officer billets in her home. Unlike Vianne, Isabelle anticipates how atrocious the war will will become and refuses to accept the enemy's presence and runs away to join the Resistance, heedless of the danger it places herself and her family in.
This novel was compulsively readable. I was instantly sucked into the story and the characters. The alternating chapters help build tension and Hannah does an excellent job of making both sisters' storylines equally compelling. The dire nature of occupied France is clearly felt as is the desperation of people trying desperately to survive. This was such an enjoyable and fast read and I fully understand why this book has been so popular and so well read.
That being said, as many others have noted in their reviews. some suspension of disbelief is required. This is a work of historical fiction and it does have flaws in its historical research. Characters are able to obtain false papers, get away despite shocking odds, and suddenly obtain money for transportation despite not having a dollar left to their name previously. While not being perfectly accurate in all its historical context, overall Hannah has done her best to remain true to history and the women who inspired this book. Vianne and Isabelle were beautiful, heroic, flawed characters whose stories kept me reading late into the night.
Stars: 4
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