The Nightingale in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Jun 27, 2019 Lyn rated it really liked it

A powerful WWII book.

One of the most devastating tragedies in history occurred eighty years ago and its resonance stays with us today, being kept alive by memories of grandparents and from stories like this. World War II is a bountiful setting for historical fiction because as an epic event it touched so many lives, so each person will have a different perspective of the horrors survived and endured.

Author Kristin Hannah describes the war from the viewpoint of two French sisters, Vianne and Isab A powerful WWII book.

One of the most devastating tragedies in history occurred eighty years ago and its resonance stays with us today, being kept alive by memories of grandparents and from stories like this. World War II is a bountiful setting for historical fiction because as an epic event it touched so many lives, so each person will have a different perspective of the horrors survived and endured.

Author Kristin Hannah describes the war from the viewpoint of two French sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, who played important roles in the French resistance to Nazi aggression and occupation.

Hannah’s great accomplishment here is to further humanize the struggle by telling this story with a maternal sympathy and eye for detail. We see the day to day difficulties of the occupied French of finding food to eat when the Germans took most goods, of clothing and teaching children, and of keeping their dignity when in a short time they had gone from a free people to forced servitude. Hannah also describes the Germans in varying degrees of Nazi alliance, providing an objective view that some Germans were carrying out orders while others embraced the evil.

We also learned about the Vichy French and the Nazi collaborators, those who betrayed their neighbors and sided with the occupiers. Hannah shows us this situation where townsfolk who’ve known each other all their lives took different sides.

Hannah’s characterization is spot on, we get to know the sisters and their families and we feel the dynamic of the tough lives they live. The author also provides examples of heroism and of superhuman endurance as lives are saved from the Nazis. Any depiction of this time can be ugly and Hannah spares us none of the brutality of that time, but always from a woman’s perspective, always with a sympathy born of familiarity with life, love and memories lost and striving to regain those connections from the ravages of war.

This is a good book, but not perfect. There were many banal clichés of this genre and I felt that some of the scenes were contrived to produce emotion. At worst this can read like a made for TV movie on Lifetime, with soft edges and soap opera drama.

All in all an entertaining and engaging novel that draws the reader in.

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Jan 10, 2016 Chris Haught rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audible-owned, ford-audiobook-club

I received a free audio copy of this book from Audible and the publisher through Goodreads

...and I had an entire review written, only to have complete computer random shutdown. Ugh.

Basically I said that I took a long time to listen to this, but it was a personal reading funk and not any fault of the author, or the excellent narrator, Polly Stone.

I do like historical fiction, but I'm not a huge fan of the World War II era stories. Still, I did find myself pulled in by Hannah's writing, and the ph ...more

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Dec 07, 2016 Christina Pilkington rated it really liked it

4.5 stars

What an incredibly, beautiful story about two sisters who lived through the awful years of the Nazi occupation of France during World War II! I would have given this book five stars if I had not already read All The Light We Cannot See this year, which blew me away, but this was pretty close to a five star read for me, too.

The story is told from both the present day and the past. In the present, the story is told from a first person POV. We don't find out which sister is narrating thos ...more

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Feb 09, 2019 Aqsa marked it as july-tbr · review of another edition

Shelves: most-anticipated-reads, recommended-to-me

Also recommended by mari. ...more

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Sep 24, 2017 Susy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-ibooks

4.5 stars
A "beautiful", gripping story of two sisters' very different lives during WW II, different yet both with a lot of sacrifices, losses and pain. As I've mentioned before in reviews of other books about WW II, I just get drawn in and start thinking about all the suffering and all the lives that were lost, so maybe I'm a bit biased when I review WW II stories/books (or maybe I just haven't read a poorly written one). Still I think Hannah did a wonderful job and I couldn't help but feeling t ...more

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Jun 16, 2015 Cindy rated it did not like it

Shelves: audiobooks, lifes-too-short-dnf

Do the final chapters of this novel contain some astonishing plot twists AND a strong amnesiac to make readers forget the effort required to reach the end? How else to explain all the 4- and 5-star ratings? From its thinly drawn, stereotyped characters to its predictable plot progression, I find this book astonishingly boring. I'm putting it aside just over one third of the way in. A better book on a similar subject is Captain Corelli's Mandolin (de Bernieres). And I highly recommend the excelle ...more

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Jan 06, 2022 Andy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

As palavras e frases simples soltas em francês me fizeram pensar nas aulas em que eu literalmente fui apenas duas semanas e aprendi as famosas "saudações". ...more

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