The Nightingale

The Nightingale is a World War II novel about two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac, who are confronted with the Nazi invasion of France. The book actually starts in 1995 with an elderly woman who knows she is dying of cancer, and at the insistence of her son, she is preparing to move out of her house on the Oregon Coast into a retirement setting. As she goes through her attic in preparation for the move, she comes across an old trunk with relics from the war, especially an identity tag for Juliette Gervais, a name she has not thought about for a long time. Her son looks at the tag and asks who that might be. Just then, an invitation comes in the mail for a reunion of a group of people in France. The woman who speaks the story in the first person, whose identity is not revealed until the end, decides that it is time to tell her son, Julien, her story for the first time, something she has never breathed to him before. He really has no idea who his mother is.

The two sisters take a very different approach to the war. Vianne is married and when her husband is told to report to the French army, she decides she will just try to survive and protect their daughter. Isabelle, who is only 17 years old, is rebellious, impetuous, and willing to take big risks. She finds a way to join the resistance movement from the start of the war, and anyone caught by the Nazis in the act of helping the resistance is immediately shot. The author skillfully tells the stories of the two sisters as they struggle in their own ways. The author captured the ugliness of war along with the beauty of the effort to survive.

I nearly put this one down at about the 30% mark because the action was developing slowly and I have an aversion to holocaust books. But, this not just a holocaust book. And my daughter who recommended it, said she fought her way through the first third before she became captivated by it. The decision to stay with it was well worth the effort. This is a story about family and love under the worst of circumstances. The Nightingale gets my strong recommendation.