The Nightingale: A Novel by Kristin Hannah (5 stars)

An incredibly powerful story of a family living through the Nazi occupation of France. It follows two sisters, one joins the resistance and the other fights to keep her family alive through the many hardships of Nazi occupation, including starvation rations and no heat in winter.

This book made my cry. A lot. I had trouble reading the final chapters because I was bawling my eyes out.

Unlike much historical fiction it doesn't fall into the trap of beating you over the head with boring details just because the author spent time researching them. I'm certainly no history buff, so I'm not qualified to judge accuracy, but it felt plausible. It struck what I thought was a good balance of accuracy and poetic license to allow the author to create an emotional connection to the characters.

There's a number of memorable lines, some of my favourites are:

In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.

“I’m not fragile,” she said. The smile he gave her was barely one at all. “We are all fragile, Isabelle. It’s the thing we learn in war.” 

However, the writing is fairly simple and approachable on the whole. Hannah says she wanted to tell the forgotten story of women's resistance and struggle through WWII, and she did so, spectacularly:

“Men tell stories,” I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. “Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over. 

I was angry at Vianne for handing over the names of the Jews and others in her town with no protest. Of course I have the benefit of hindsight, I know the horror of the traincars and the camps are what's coming, and she didn't. And she was in a very vulnerable position. But I felt she should of at least made Beck threaten her explicitly before giving up her best friend and her family, she just assumed the threat was there and implied.

Minor quibble: Nightingale could not have been a worse code name. It's literally her last name. I mean come on.

I wished there was more detail on how the safe houses were established and worked, and how they had to innovate to cross the border. The first crossing we experience with Isabelle is very precarious, I can't imagine they could continue like that for long. Since this part was based on a true story I would think the details could be found with enough research.

Overall a very powerful and harrowing book.

5 stars.