The Nightingale Book Review

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

*This review contains spoilers*

Content Warning

This review contains mention of rape, Nazis, and the death of a child. 

Introduction 

Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale is an immensely popular book in the bookstagram community. I was nervous to start reading it because it had earned so many five star reviews, so I was worried about being disappointed. There's also the fact that this book so often gets compared to Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, which I read previously and loved. Needless to say, I was nervous for this one. 

Did it live up to the hype? 

Not exactly. Don't get me wrong. It was a good book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It just didn't quite reach the threshold of a five-star read for me because I had a few issues with it. So let's dive into it!

Summary & Review 

The Nightingale is a historical fiction novel set in France during the events of WWII. It is told from the dual points of view of two sisters, Vianne Mauriac and Isabelle Rossignol. There is a bit of a dual timeline going on because there are a few places where you get glimpses of the present, and these flashfoward chapters are told from first-person perspective instead of third (like the chapters that take place in the past). This switch in narration style is a clever way for Hannah to disguise which sister is telling the flashforward chapters right away, as it is implied that only one of them survives to the present timeline, and Hannah clearly doesn't want to give away to her reader which one that will be, which I really appreciated the intrigue of. The bulk of the novel, however, takes place in the historical setting. 

I do have a bit of a bias when it came to reading this novel because I'm obsessed with France, the French language and culture, and especially with historical France, so that aspect of the setting piqued my interest right from the start. Although, I was immediately put off a bit by the prose and narration of the novel. Something about the writing style didn't quite click for me in the earliest few chapters, as it felt like it was YA-style writing trying to pose as adult writing. Once I actually got into the book, I got used to Hannah's writing style, and it didn't bother me as much as it did initially. 

One thing that I did enjoy right from the start, though, was the relationship between the sisters. I loved Hannah's setting it up as two sisters who became estranged as they grew older and eventually find their way back to each other. I do wish we had gotten a larger portion of the novel dedicated to the two sisters together, but I understand why, for the sake of each of their characters' individual development, Hannah didn't give us that. 

Isabelle, in my opinion, had the better development out of the two Rossignols. In the earlier portions of the novel, I found the whole "Isabelle is impetuous" and the almost ditzy aspect of her character a bit heavy-handed. It was almost as if Hannah was trying to make it explicitly clear that Isabelle was naive and careless and dependent just to make her later development have a larger impact on the reader. But in doing so, Hannah does slightly take away her reader's ability to come to their own conclusions about who Isabelle was at the beginning of the story. There are subtle moments, of course, that would have been enough to clue the reader in, such as the way Isabelle regards her lessons and gets expelled, or the way that Vianne has to help her into the bath the night of the bombings. Unfortunately, Hannah doesn't just leave us with these clever moments of characterization. She goes so far as to have Gaetan literally leave a note with an unconscious Isabelle's clothing, saying, "You are not ready."

Yes, Kristin Hannah, we get it. She's young, naive, immature, and has a lot to learn before she becomes the heroine of this story. It didn't need to be spoonfed to us.

That being said, despite its heavy-handed beginning, I do love where Isabelle's character ends up. Her eventual bravery and cleverness in joining the resistance and becoming a wartime hero known as "The Nightingale," who helps evacuate people out of Nazi-occupied France, is truly the heart of this story. The woman who Isabelle becomes is a far cry from the careless young girl she was when the novel started. It almost reads like a Bildungsroman, in that sense.

While I like where Isabelle ends up more than her sister, I do think Vianne's storyline in the novel has more about it to dissect. Even months after reading it, I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. 

Vianne is the mother of a young daughter named Sophie, and her husband goes off to fight in the war. But Vianne and Sophie are not left alone in their home during the Nazi occupation of France. As per real history, Vianne's home becomes occupied by a Nazi soldier, Wolfgang Beck, who she and her daughter, somewhat affectionately, call "Herr Captain."

So, here is the initial aspect of the novel that I bristled against: the seeming romanticization of "Herr Captain." Over time, the longer that he is occupying Vianne's home, she seems to develop romantic feelings for him. He does special favors for her, such as by supplying them with food during a time when most everyone else in town is living off rations, without enough to go around. And Vianne rationalizes taking the food from him because she has a daughter she needs to take care of, and she won't refuse the food on principle when her daughter may end up starving as a result. 

I am making this explicitly clear right off the bat. I don't like the romantic feelings that develop between Vianne and Beck at all, and I could have done without them in the novel completely. I don't like her opinion on him that seems to paint him as "The Good Nazi" trope, especially not after Hannah gives us plenty of scenes to show us that he isn't (and they were more subtly crafted than the early characterization of Isabelle). What I do like about this aspect of the story is the way that I can tear it apart and analyze it from the literary-psychoanalytical standpoint of a reader who loves digging into characters. 

So let's start with Beck. First off, again, he is absolutely, one hundred percent, NOT a good Nazi. I don't believe such a thing actually exists, and I don't actually think Hannah is trying to insinuate that he is, not if you're paying attention at least. The thing that a lot of readers don't understand is that the feelings of a character don't necessarily always represent the feelings of the author. Just because Vianne seems to like Beck doesn't mean Hannah is trying to tell us that they should too. She includes many such scenes to actually sour his character to the reader: his hoarding of food that makes even Vianne uncomfortable when most of France is starving, his literal carrying of a whip as he helps Jewish women and children be carted out of the city, his manipulation of Vianne to write him a list of anyone she knows who might be Jewish (or from another targeted minority) at the school she works for. In fact, this entire convoluted scheme he came up with with having Vianne make him this list was clearly a manipulation tactic, because Vianne intentionally leaves her friend Rachel's name off the list, and Beck corrects her, reminding her that she forgot it, which implies that he already knew which names should be on it. So, what was the point of having her write a list of names he already knew or had access to, if not to manipulate her? And of course, there is his violent, angry outburst the night that Isabelle is caught hiding in Vianne's cellar. He definitely isn't a good guy, that much is clear. 

So why does Vianne seem to hold him in higher regard than she does any other Nazi?

I really think it comes down to the dependency Vianne became accustomed to having on him. As previously stated, she relied on Beck to supply her and her daughter with food, not to mention getting ahold of medicine for Sophie when she came down with a fever, potentially saving Vianne's daughter's life. He took over the presence in their household that once belonged to her husband, and it happened at a very traumatic moment in time with their country being targeted and occupied. And there was also nothing she could do about him living there. He was going to occupy her house whether she was comfortable with it or not. I do not believe for a single second that Vianne actually loved Beck, so much as her attachment to him was a trauma response due to a situation she couldn't control and grew accustomed to. 

And I love the fact that when having to choose between Isabelle and Beck, she chose Isabelle. This love between the sisters is what a truly wish we could have had more of, because I love this moment so much, in which Beck decides to search Vianne's house and uncovers Isabelle in the cellar. The two sisters, essentially, both kill Beck, with Vianne hitting him with a shovel and Isabelle shooting him. Vianne knew the dangers of attacking a Nazi officer, but she did it to save her sister. 

Things do take a different turn when a new Nazi billets in Vianne's home in the stead of Beck. Von Richter is an abhorrent, atrocious, vile man. And, of course, there are some very unfortunate instances of him taking advantage of Vianne during his stay in her home, and Vianne only allows it to continue for the sake of protecting her daughter and "Daniel" from him. It's very dark and uncomfortable to read, but it is sadly probably realistic. I think Hannah handled the topic of rape in WWII better than Anthony Doerr did in All the Light We Cannot See. I'm also glad that Hannah was not graphic in her descriptions of these moments, and I'm relieved that she did finally depict a Nazi in a cruelly accurate way, instead of the vaguely rose-tinted way that she chose to show Beck. I only wish that these moments could have allowed Vianne to actually contemplate the true nature of Beck a little further and maybe finally admit that, though he wasn't as horrible as Von Richter, he wasn't really actually a good person.

Another portion of the novel that I liked, and that I wish had gotten a bit more attention, is that of Vianne's neighbor and best friend Rachel, and her two children, Sarah and Ari. Rachel and her family are Jewish, and so eventually, they are targeted by the Nazis. One aspect of Rachel's storyline that I think should have been of a larger conflict than it ended up being is the situation in which Beck manipulated Vianne to betray her friend by including her name on a list of Jewish people teaching at the school. The shockwaves of this betrayal should have been immense for Rachel, given the risk that it poses not just to herself, but to her children as well, but she gets over her anger at Vianne by the end of just that chapter. It was too quick, in my opinion. I feel that Hannah should have lingered on the severity of what Vianne just did a bit longer, and really let the reader come to terms with how horrible the mistake that Vianne just made was, and it let it feed the idea of how heavily Beck had ingratiated himself into Vianne's comfort-zone. 

It also might have been beneficial for Rachel to even be a viewpoint character in this novel, as I feel that not enough WWII-era books feature the perspectives of Jewish protagonists. That being said, there a likely reason why Hannah did not go this route. She probably wanted to story to stay grounded from the perspectives of just the sisters. And if Kristin Hannah herself is not Jewish, then I'm glad she didn't try to write from the perspective of someone Jewish during such a critical period of Jewish history, as such as story would be better left for a Jewish author to tell. However, she could have given Rachel's fear and trauma during the duration of this story a bit more attention. 

Now, I do think the roles of Rachel's children were done very well. Her older child, her daughter Sarah, is the best friend of Vianne's daughter Sophie, who is of a similar age. During Beck's stay in Vianne's home, he gives her the ominous warning that he thinks Rachel and her family should hide for a while. Vianne takes this as a realization that the Nazis are going to target the local Jewish families. Rachel, upon hearing this warning, decides to try and cross the border and leave with her children. During the attempt, though, the Nazis were already waiting. They shot at everyone in the crowd, and Sarah is hit and killed. The entire scene was heartwrenching, and I could barely contain my tears when Rachel lied to Sarah in her final moments to tell her that they made it across the border, even though they didn't.

Then I sobbed like an infant at the line of Vianne's thoughts of the situation: "Now she had to bury her best friend's daughter. Her daughter's best friend." 

Rachel's son Ari has a much different fate in the novel, and while it ends up being bittersweet, it's not nearly as tragic as his sister's. Rachel is arrested by Nazi officers not long after Sarah's death, and she begs Vianne to save her son. Beck then defies his position as a Nazi and helps Vianne forge fake identification papers that claim Ari is her son and that his name is Daniel. He goes on to live and survive the war with Vianne's family until the end of the novel, when she learns that Rachel did die in a concentration camp after her arrest. She intends to legally adopt Ari and keep him with her family, but that all changes when a man who is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust named Lerner comes to inform Vianne that he wants to reconnect Ari with surviving distant family members. It's a difficult decision for Vianne to come to, but ultimately Lerner helps convince her that the survival of the Jewish people and their culture after the Holocaust is of paramount importance, so Vianne decides to let Ari go, so that he may be raised with his Jewish roots. 

It is also around this same period of time that Vianne is reconnected with her husband, Antoine, who survived his time as a prisoner-of-war. Vianne also learns that she is pregnant from her sexual abuse by Von Richter. She never admits to her husband what happened with either of the Nazis who occupied their home, instead she quickly seduces her husband upon his return, so that she can easily explain away the pregnancy to him. When she tells him, though, it is heavily implied that Antoine understands the truth, and he is just choosing not to say anything about it, because both of them are both traumatized from their experiences from the war, and he feels its best they try to move on and be happy. 

This revelation does progress the reader's understanding of the flashforward chapters. As you're left wondering which sister is narrating them, it becomes increasingly clear with the reveal of Vianne's pregnancy that it is probably her--as the sister narrating the flashforwards has a son. That leaves the reader with a darker understanding, which is that it means Isabelle likely won't survive. 

Vianne's sister Isabelle also spends some time in a concentration camp towards the end of the book. Her time as "The Nightingale," was great character development for Isabelle. She truly grew up and transitioned from being a naive young girl to being a strong woman. And while she helped save many lives, the path Isabelle chose to walk was not without its consequences for her. It leads to the death of her father Julien, who was also involved in the resistance operation, and who confessed to being "The Nightingale" to help protect her, and he was eventually executed for it. She is also eventually arrested by the Nazis herself. 

The death of Isabelle's father Julien is a good way on Hannah's part to trick the reader into thinking that she might be the narrator in the flashforward chapters, as the son of the future narrator is named Julien. Throughout the book, Isabelle interacts with him more and, of course, he sacrifices himself for her, so it's a natural assumption to think that maybe she has a child eventually--with Gaetan possibly being the father--and that she named her son for her father. However, this was only Hannah intentionally throwing in a red herring, as the future protagonist is, in fact, Vianne, and Julien is her son by Von Richter, who she passed off as Atoine's. 

Isabelle does initially survive her time in the concentration camp and is reunited with both her sister and Gaetan, with whom she had developed a romantic relationship earlier in the novel. 

Their relationship started in a way I enjoyed, with him helping Isabelle flee the bombings, and realizing that she is too young and naive to be part of the resistance when she tells him that she loves him after only knowing him for a few days. After Isabelle matures a bit, and she starts taking the initiative to become an active resistance member, and she starts showcasing her strength, Gaetan and her are reconnected through their shared resistance work and forge a real romantic connection--one that is not as flighty and whimsical as Isabelle's earlier declaration of love. 

I was on board with all this as part of Isabelle's character growth, and in Hannah showing the reader how Isabelle started becoming more grounded in reality. I do think their relationship is cheapened a bit by the ending though. Vianne reconnects them after Isabelle comes to stay with her at the end of the war, and Gaetan confesses that he always loved Isabelle, implying even in the beginning. It feels a bit out of character, based on how Gaetan had always behaved and been characterized, to say that he also fell in love with a girl he had literally just met. That aspect was in line with Isabelle's early characterization, but never Gaetan's, who always seemed to be more of a gritty realist. It also feels like it cheapens the real growth that their relationship underwent later, because that felt like the genuine beginning of love, whereas their meeting in the earlier chapters just felt like attraction and Isabelle's gratitude for Gaetan saving her life. Hannah undermines that a bit by trying to push the idea that Gaetan fell in love at first sight with Isabelle as much as she did with him. 

It's also probably pretty cheesy that Isabelle dies shortly after Gaetan confesses his love for her. I like the sentiment of Isabelle feeling like love and being loved is a fundamental part of her life, especially with how we know from the flashforward chapters that she goes on to be warmly remembered by history, but the actual timing is just a little too good to be true. 

The final chapter showcases a much older Vianne attending a reunion in the honor of her sister Isabelle, which commemorates her for her work as "The Nightingale." There are some meaningful reunions here, with Vianne finally connecting with Ari after all their years apart and him revealing to her that he never forgot her. She also meets up with Gaetan, who is still alive, and introduces her to his daughter, who he named Isabelle. That's probably cheesy too, and maybe a bit creepy that he named his daughter after a woman with whom he had a romantic and sexual relationship with, but I understand the sentiment that Hannah was going for, as his explanation was that it was because Isabelle saved his life. And ultimately, I do like the ending with Vianne promising that she will tell Julien the entire story with the expception of one secret, implying that she never intends to tell her son that he is not Antoine's biological son or that his father was a Nazi rapist. That much is probably for the best and keeps in tone with the stories themes about family and love, as it was Antoine who raised and loved Julien as a father, so that's what matters most to Vianne. 

Final Thoughts 

My rating of The Nightingale is 4 out of 5 stars. It was dramatic with emotional moments that genuinely moved me, and I loved the relationship between the sisters as a focal point, but the prose was a bit bland, and the romantic relationships in the novel were a bit of a weak spot.