03 February 2015

Book Review: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

C'est très belle, n'est-ce pas?
"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."

These are the opening lines to Kristin Hannah's new novel, The Nightingale, and they are an excellent two sentence summary of this novel. Hannah, known up until now primarily for her emotional relationship fiction (á la Nicholas Sparks, with perhaps a touch less romance), takes on new ground in this book, published today by St. Martin's Press.

I'm pretty selective in the commercial fiction that I read, but a few months ago I was invited to a pre-publication dinner party with Kristin Hannah, so I promptly picked this book up to read.  Or rather, I picked up an advance audio version of the book to listen to on my commute.  This was a mistake, because while the reader herself was quite good, the audio direction was a little lacking.  Because most of this book takes place in France, the reader was apparently directed to render all of the dialogue with a French accent, despite the fact that the French characters would presumably be speaking French, and therefore a French-accented English is entirely unnecessary.

 I stopped listening to the audio and picked up the book to read instead. And man, this is a good story.  Let me be clear here, since I tend to review literary fiction on this blog.  This is not literary fiction, so please do not pick up The Nightingale and expect finely crafted prose.  Frankly, if that's the only thing you're looking for in your novels, you probably should not be reading my blog anyway. With this book, Hannah gets to the emotional heart of war and the human existence, and I'm not sure that you can ask for more than that out of a novel. What's more, she has brought to light for the first time in English the story of various French women and their resistance efforts during World War II, and any time that women's stories become less marginalized is a victory in my book.

Vianne and Isabelle are two sisters with very different sensibilities and priorities. After the Nazis invade France and the Vichy government takes over, they have polar opposite reactions.  Isabelle refuses to play by the new rules, preferring instead to thumb her nose at the new authorities while Vianne keeps her head down and tries to get by, knowing that with her husband fighting at the front, it is up to her to keep food on the table for her daughter, Sophie. Growing apart quickly, and with not much trust or love lost between them, little does the other suspect that each sister will eventually serve the resistance effort in her own way.

I think it's fair to say that when it comes to war stories, I've always been as interested in the stories of those who are left behind as I am in the narratives of those who actively fight at the front, if not more so. Not least because those are often women's stories, stories that become anonymous in the face of time, lacking the active glamorization of war that often accompanies men's stories.  Not to detract from any soldier's experience -- they were harrowing and defined by deprivation, I'm sure -- but Hannah's novel hits on the heart of war at home and the devastating choices one has to learn to make.

Unlike many wartime settings, Hannah leaves room for characters who are neither obviously heroic nor cowardly, but somewhere in between. It demands readers to think about what they would (or would not) do to keep their loved ones safe from harm: Would you feed another starving human if it means your own child will go without food? Would you risk your home as a safe house? Would you turn away from the torture or murder of a neighbor if interfering means capital punishment? How do you raise your child to be a moral person when you cannot set the example you wish to, because to do so is to risk your life or your child's? Above all, how can you possibly atone for the betrayal, albeit inadvertent, of a loved one?

More than anything else, I would say that this book demonstrates that the lines drawn in the sand between what we are and are not capable of doing are ever-shifting under the weight of our complicated humanity. Vianne's and Isabelle's narratives stayed with me for many weeks after I turned the last page, and I'm thankful to Kristin Hannah for giving their stories a place on my shelf.

I never did make it to the author dinner to which I'd been invited; it took place in Boston, about two hours away from me, on a night when the forecast was calling for a 100% chance of freezing rain & snow, and I've regretted not being able to attend ever since. My wonderful sales rep, Bob, managed to attend, however, and procure for me a signed copy in my absence. The book itself is quite beautiful, and it goes on sale in the US today, courtesy of St. Martin's Press.

Lovely map endpapers

16 comments:

  1. Fantastic review! I am hoping to read this book in the next few weeks and I'm glad that you enjoyed it. The last book I read by Hannah sort of let me down, so hopefully this one will be just as good as Firefly Lane, which I loved!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This was only the 2nd book of hers that I'd read, and I thought it was significantly better -- but then again, this book's subject matter was much more up my alley. HOpe you like it, too!

      Delete
  2. Oooh no, with the bad accents. That sort of sounds hilarious for a few minutes. I'm glad once you got past it, it was a pretty good book. Not necessarily my cup of tea (WWII eh...)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some bits of the audio were laughable -- there was a point when a German officer was speaking French, but with a German accent, but where the audio reader was forced to render that in English but with a slightly French-German accent. *shakes head*

      Delete
  3. This book is terrific from beginning to end....and starts with the beautiful book cover. Absolutely loved it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cool! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the book. I'm glad that you liked it, too.

      Delete
  4. WTF THAT BOOK IS SO PRETTY

    "It demands readers to think about what they would (or would not) do to keep their loved ones safe from harm" <-- I like books that do stuff like that. Like in California where the main + was having to think about if you'd survive in a near-post-apocalyptic environment (I would not)

    Damn, Emily. I might read this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I definitely wouldn't survive in a post-apocalyptic environment. And frankly, probably not in an occupied-during-wartime one, either. I'd *want* to be heroic but then I'd get hungry and probably eat the food that the Nazi officer who's billeted with me would share. And then who knows where that would lead?

      Delete
  5. That book is so pretty I MUST HAVE EET.

    While I appreciate literary fiction, I am never be pretentious about it - as long as the story is good, I don't mind reading more simplistic prose. You raised really tough questions in your review, and I hope to learn more about the resistance effort from the home front. Great review, and I hope to get my hands on this one soon!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I really loved reading this novel. I think it's a book that a lot of people should read and I definitely recommend it. I hope Ms. Hannah writes more books like this in the future.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I couldn't put this book down, and I am an obsessed reader who has to have another book ready when one is finished. I felt as if I was living this story, since it stayed with me. I actually read the first third of the book again to make sure I had it all. I immediately went to my library for more books by her, as I'd never heard of her. What a disappointmen! Her usual books are what I refer to as 'women's books' and I won't read another, unless she actually has changed her writing style. By the way, the 'Isabelle' character is patterned after Andree deJonge of the aristocracy of the Netherlands, who saved many by taking them on the route to Spain over the Pyrenees. It might have been nice if she was credited.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Winter Garden is a great Kristen Hannah book that is historical. I liked it more than The Nightingale.

      Delete
  8. I finished the book last night and loved it. I had to go back and reread the chapters from Oregon thinking I'd missed how Vianne & Antoine got to America but there's no mention of it. Vi mentions the "house she's been in for almost 50 years" as they are selling it. The Paris anniversary was a 50th one. So they had to have come to America even before Julien was born and right after Isabel died.

    Also...I read the entire book thinking the narrator was Isabel only to be SHOCKED at the end to learn that Vianne was telling the story. Did others think the same thing? .

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yes I thought the same thing. I'm a little confused. Did Isabel literally die while she was standing there talking to gaetan?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. So sad. She was just waiting for him. I went back to read a lot of it too, especially the end, as I thought Isabel was telling the story. My 'anonymous' reply is shown above on July 24, 2015

      Delete
    2. yes, she did die as Gaetan arrived. She was waiting for him. I was confused too at the end as I thought it was Isabel telling the story. my first comment is above, sent on July 24, 2015.

      Delete

Please, sir, may I have some more? (Comments, that is!)