The Nightingale - Review by Pat

For our May meeting, we met and reviewed The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.  With five of us at the meeting, we all were of the consensus that it was an easy read and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the book.  The overall ratings ranged from 4 to 4.5 with an average of 4.35.  All of us in attendance agreed that when we compared this book with the other World War II books we have read recently at book club (The Book Thief and All The Light We Cannot See), we felt that Hannah’s writing style was not as eloquently written but the overall plot and character development was intriguing and well executed.  

The Nightingale is the story of two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, each with their own unique personalities that come into play with how they deal with surviving World War II.  The story begins with the narrator, Vianne, recanting her life story of the war beginning in France, 1939 and the reader doesn’t know until the end of the story which sister is the narrator.   This is one of the many twists and turns that the reader encounters throughout the book.  

The sisters have opposite personalities as well as a significant age difference between the two of them. Isabelle is eighteen, rebellious and reckless, and she joins the Resistance to save numerous lives in her quest to fight the Nazi’s.  Vianne, is older with a passive personality, however, as the story progresses, she becomes braver and assumes an active role in saving her best friends son as well as saving the lives of Jewish children.  Our book club decided each sister was equally heroic based on the circumstances and the decisions each of them had to deal with during the war.  Vianne had her children, Sophie and Ari, to protect and we all agreed that she had to assume a more cautious role in order for her family to survive.  

Each of the sisters had their own love stories and the book follows their strength, endurance and courage during this dark period of their lives.  The book had some brutal scenes with starvation, rape, torture, and prison camps – just what you expect when reading about World War II.  The story does a good job of portraying the strength both of these women exhibited and what they had to sacrifice in order to survive. 

The biggest disappointment we had about the book was the ending where Isabelle died in Gaetan’s arms which we felt was a little contrived and unrealistic.  We did like the reunion scene at the end of the book where Vianne reconnects with Gaetan and Ari.  In summary, this book gets a solid “thumbs up” as a really great read.