THE NIGHTINGALE (2015)
Kristin Hannah
St. Martin's, 438
pages, #978-0312577223
* * * *
I didn't plan to
read a lot of books about World War Two this year, but it was inevitable given
that 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over fascism. World War II is often dubbed the
"good war," and it has also turned out to be a very good conflict for
skilled novelists. Count Kristin Hannah among them. The Nightingale is set in Nazi-controlled France. (Note: France
fell to Hitler's blitzkrieg in May of
1940. The northern part was directly controlled by Germany and was called
Occupied France; the south—Provence and adjacent regions–was the "Free
Zone," though the government in Vichy was only nominally governed by
Marshal Pétain, who was little more than a Nazi puppet. In 1942, the Vichy
fiction ended and Germany assumed direct control over the entire of France.)
The theme of
Hannah's novel is nicely summed near the end when an elderly woman (one of our
protagonists), recollects: "In love we find out who we want to be; in war,
we find out who we are." The book centers on two sisters: married,
cautious Vianne, who lives in the Loire Valley near the border of Occupied and
Vichy France; and headstrong 18-year-old Isabel, whose greatest knack prior to
the war involved being booted from a series of boarding schools that failed to
make a young 'lady' of her. Isabel had the bad timing to wash out of her final
school weeks before the Nazis arrived in Paris, where she is living with her broken-down,
widowed, and drink-prone father–a World War One hero who wants no part of sharing
his living quarters, least of all with the outspoken Isabel, an omnipresent
danger once Paris falls. Vianne doesn't want Isabel either–she's a village
teacher trying to to feed her daughter, Sophie, while her husband is in a POW
camp after the Fall of France. Even worse, Occupied France is subject to a
quartering act and Vianne's home is one of those that must house Nazi officers.
Hannah builds on the
time-honored sibling rivalry theme; at least on the surface, Isabel and Vianne
are oil and water, with Isabel becoming the book's namesake
"Nightingale," a secret Resistance operative who helps smuggle
shot-down Allied pilots out of France and into Spain. The descriptions of her
activities are page turning and harrowing; they are also totally believable as
her character is modeled upon a real heroine: Belgium's Andrée de Jongh. In
many ways, though, Vianne is the more complex character, as she must walk a
tightrope whose terminus she cannot see. Can she trust Captain Beck, the first
officer who billets in her house? He seems kind, but is he? Are his questions
innocent, or sinister? Can she even respond to kindness without being viewed as
a collaborator? Moreover, she's hemmed in by a dilemma that transcends war: to
what lengths will/should a mother go to protect her child? How should she react
when that child comes to admire her aunt's chutzpah over her mother's caution?
Indeed, how does one explain to an elementary-aged child just what's happening
in her nation and village?
That village,
Carriveau (possibly real-life Touraine) is also central to the novel. Its
border town setting means that Vianne's and Isabel's worlds will collide at
some point. The decision is, as an old union song phrased it, which side are
you on? Hannah's descriptions of Vianne working her way through moral dilemmas
would do proud a modern values clarification expert. She also does a wonderful
job of drawing out the tension and not resolving matters in easy or formulaic
ways; in fact, we don't actually know how a lot of things are settled until
near the end when we find ourselves in 1995.
Hannah has done her
research well and presents a solid portrait of the French Underground, acts of
everyday resistance on the part of non-combatants, and the confusion that
French people must have felt in the countryside. In Paris and other cities, the
Nazis were an impersonal and ever-present irritant; not so in rural France,
where citizens had both more personal contact, yet less frequent dealings with
their occupiers. Give Hannah credit also for delving into a shameful event the
French have only recently confronted: the Rafle
du Vélodrome d'Hiver. Shortly after the Vichy government was dissolved in
1942, more than 13,000 Jews–4,000 of whom were children–in the south of France
were rounded up and placed in a cycling stadium until they were transported to
prison camps. Few survived.*
The Nightingale is emotionally impactful,
thrilling in its action scenes, and honestly ordinary is its depictions of
everyday life and universal dilemmas. Add this one to your list.
Rob Weir
* The film Sarah's Key (2010) is a deeply moving
take on the Vel d'Hiv (as it's
usually called) roundup of Jews in Provence.
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