I’ve read my fair share of World War II novels, but Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale tells the story from a very different angle. In this novel that follows the lives of two French sisters over the span of two decades the reader sees what it was like to be a non-Jewish French woman living during the war. Parts of it reminded me of All The Light We Cannot See, but Hannah (whose books I have read before) has a very feminine voice and there is a real romanticism within her words. This books delves into some tough topics like abandonment, sibling relations, the impossible choice of when to befriend the enemy, how to recover from betraying a friend, and what the human spirit is capable of enduring in order to survive. I’ll warn you it is not a light read, but one well worth it.
Great book !