'The Nightingale' by Kristin Hannah

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Date Published: February 2015
Date Read: 08/02/2015
My rating: 5 of 5 stars ✯✯✯✯✯

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale begins with the reflections of a terminally ill elderly woman on the Oregon Coast in the year 1995. The identity of this woman remains a mystery for much of the book and to me, not knowing her identity (and thus not knowing who ultimately survived) really enriched the story. Hannah could have definitely set the entire book during World War II and still had a literary masterpiece, but I think a huge part of what made The Nightingale so moving was the beautiful way she incorporated the present (well, 1995) into a incredible story about a tragic past. The way she does this is going to warm and break your heart at the same bittersweet time, I promise.

Despite beginning and ending in the year 1995, the majority of The Nightingale takes place in German-occupied France during World War II. The story focuses on the lives of two estranged sisters and their own experiences in the war. Vianne Mauriac is the elder sister whose husband leaves to fight for the French against the Germans. She is forced to house a German captain in her home and lives in constant fear for the safety of her daughter Sophie and the family of Rachel, her Jewish best friend. Her younger sister Isabelle Rossignol is one of those restless, wild souls who either ran-away from or was expelled from every finishing school her father ever forced her into attending. Unwanted by both her father, who was severely psychologically damaged by the Great War, and her sister, who has a child of her own to protect, Isabelle yearns to fight for France. When Paris falls to the Germans, Isabelle is sent to Vianne's home in the country. She falls passionately in love with a young rebel named Gaetan along the way. He speaks of the Resistance forming underground in Paris and Isabella wants to join him; however, he leaves her once he safely delivers her to her sister's farm. Heartbroken and too rebellious to live at Vianne's with an enemy soldier, Isabelle returns to her father and joins the Resistance under the code name "The Nightingale".

In addition to the 1995 storyline, there are so many aspects of this novel that moved me...

Photo Source

#1: The setting!
I get chills at the thought of Hitler and the Nazi party flying their swastika flags from the majestic Eiffel Tower. The images of war-torn France portrayed in this book are haunting, historically significant, and just so hard to fathom. Plus, the descriptive language painted each scene so vividly: "The winter was even worse than the year before. An angry God smote Europe with leaden skies and falling snow, day after day after day. The cold was a cruel addendum to a world already bleak and ugly".--Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

#2: The bond between sisters.
Oh, these sisters! Despite a difficult childhood that put a lot of strain on their relationship, there is so much love between Viviane and Isabelle. I felt that they were such a realistic portrayal of the fierce love between sisters, despite the fighting and turmoil that sometimes comes with siblings.
' (Vianne): "I don't know why it's so easy for me to forget how much I love her. We start fighting and.."
(Gaetan): "Sisters." '-- Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

#3: The strong, brave female characters.
I've read so many books about World War II and have encountered so many heroic characters in them, but I must say that Vianne and Isabelle are the most memorable, heroic female characters I've come across. As "The Nightingale", Isabelle led Allied pilots whose planes went down over France across the Pyrenees mountains and into Spain, becoming one of the "most wanted" members of the Resistance. You would not believe how many times my heart swelled with pride and admiration for a fictional character! Vianne was such a fierce, heroic mother figure and braved war-time atrocities with a strength that was moving in itself. Plus, she goes on do her own part in saving others from the Nazis. 

Isabelle's idol, Edith Cavell, a  nurse and  hero of World War I. She helped over 200 Allied soldiers escape Belgium to neutral territory.  She was executed in October of 1915.  Photo Source

#4: My favorite quote of the book. Ohhhhhhhhh the tears.
“How fragile life was, how fragile they were.
Love.
It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between. It didn’t matter that she was broken and ugly and sick. He loved her and she loved him, All her life she had waited -longed for - people to love her, but now she saw what she really mattered. She had known love, been blessed by it.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale


Let me just say that this was a tough book to review. How does one even begin to put into the words the experience of reading such a story!? If you're like me, you write an oversized, dramatic, rambling review and cross your fingers that you come close to saying what you mean to say. In all honesty, I'm convinced that no words would have been necessary at all whatsoever if you all could have seen me reading this in all of my sobbing, chest-clutching, nose-running glory. Yes, I'd be a little embarrassed to be seen like that by anyone other than my dog (who loves me unconditionally)but I really think the sight of my splotchy face and the sound of my sobbing and occasional gasping of expletives would have said it all much better than my ramblings above. Although a book is never just a book to me, I hope that I have made it obvious that this is one to be remembered and cherished.

 The Nightingale will thrill you, engulf you, move you, devastate you... And you're going to love it.

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