The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah
In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are. FRANCE, 1939 In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.
Did anyone else notice that as the book went on, the timeline sped up more and more? The first half of the book takes place over one year while the second half takes place over three. I was a bit annoyed by this at first but I feel this was a choice by the author to show just how chaotic things had gotten. In the first half of the book, we’re settling into a new normal while trying to live as similarly to before as possible. This accounts for a slower timeline where things are still relatively normal. By the second half, all hell has broken lose and no one knows what normal is anymore. We’re constantly jumping between hours, days, weeks, and months, and honestly it’s a lot of whiplash; just like the characters are experiencing. I’m curious to know how others feel about this. Was it just poor pacing by the author that forced an ultra sped up timeline at the end or does this seem like a conscious choice?
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