Book Bloomer

Wow. I don’t know where to begin with The Nightingale(paid link). While the first half took me much longer to get through than a typical book ever has, the second half absolutely blew me away and brought me to tears.

It is about two sister’s, Isabelle and Vianne, who fight their way to survive in WWII. Isabelle, the more rebellious one, becomes the infamous “Nightingale,” who helps downed enemy airmen escape from the German forces in France. She uses her beauty and men’s ignorance to do the impossible in a time of paranoia and death. Along the way, she finds herself falling in love and realizing how much that love means to her.

In Le Jardin, Vianne must fight for the safety of her daughter, Sophie, and the other innocent lives around her. Through it all, she has two German soldiers (one after the other) who are billeted at her home. She must watch her step with everything she does. Her rebellious spirit picks up throughout the war as she witnesses more and more injustices done to her people and the ones she loves.

This novel is about love and sorrow. It is about women and their role in the war. Is is about courage and strength. It is about humanity – the horrors of it as well as the miracles.

Read this novel to reaffirm your own humanity and the places in which we’ve all come from. It will give you insight into yourself, as well as those around you. And if you’re like me, you just might be brought to tears by the courage of those in the novel as well as the pain they’ve gone through. Through all of that pain, they still were able to find joy.

That simple yet complex entity is what life is all about.