Book Review – The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Kristin Hannah always runs my emotions through the ringer. It’s a testament to her as a writer that every time I think she can’t possibly do it to me again because I’ll see it coming, I end up in tears anyway. Every single time.

The Nightingale follows the lives of two French sisters, Isabelle and Vianne, during World War II. Vianne is a mother married and happy in her quiet life. Isabelle is a stubborn rebel seeking love and acceptance from just about anyone. Their father still grieves their dead other so he is aloof to both of them. When the war comes, Isabelle is drawn into a dangerous world of delivering pamphlets containing news of the outside world behind the Nazi’s backs. This leads to her bringing downed fighter pilots for the Allied Forces out of occupied France and into Spain without the Nazi’s knowing. Vianne, with her husband a prisoner of war, is stuck living with a Nazi who has claimed her home as his. She only wants to keep her daughter safe as her Jewish friend is sent to a concentration camp and the friend’s daughter is killed in the process.

As this story progresses, the sisters find that they are more alike than they realize and Vianne eventually finds it within herself to also stand up to the Nazis in her own way by rescuing Jewish children and hiding them in an orphanage. Isabelle maintains her distance and is eventually caught by the Nazis. She is tortured for information and sent to a concentration camp. Vianne too is abused by the Nazi living in her home and becomes pregnant right before the war ends. As the Nazis leave, Vianne’s husband comes home a changed man. Isabelle barely makes it through her ordeal, and by the time she makes it back to her sister she has pneumonia and typhus.

Through all of this, Kristin Hannah also has one of these sisters traveling back to France fifty years later to celebrate the people who lost their lives fighting the Nazis. The reader doesn’t know which of the sisters has survived into old age and I won’t ruin that for you here, but it is such a sad yet gratifying ending to this book that one of the sisters lived on. Lived a full life filled with family and love. That she survived long enough to celebrate what her sister did during the war. That she was the best humanity had to offer.

While I think The Women remains my favorite Kristin Hannah novel, this one is damn close. It ranks right up there with The Great Alone and Firefly Lane. I have far more Isabelle in me than Vianne, the rebellious nature of someone who isn’t afraid to do what is right even in the worst of circumstances. I see Vianne in many of my friends. Doing whatever it takes to keep the family safe even if it means, say, adopting a jewish boy while a Nazi is living with her after the boy’s mother is sent away.

Hannah’s descriptions of these characters brought them to life in such a way that I feel like I know them. Spent time with them. Grieved with them. Felt their fear and their anger. That is what Hannah is truly best at. She gives us vibrant characters to root for. People we can root for as they go through something terrible. Women we can see ourselves in. If you haven’t read this book, I give it my highest recommendation. Don’t do what I did and let in linger on your bookshelf unread for two years before finally picking it up. Books like this deserve to be read.

5 out of 5 stars. Have tissues ready.