The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah

Hard on the heels of the thrilling novel of World War II and a pair of youngsters caught up in the Nazi invasion of France, I approached Kristin Hannah’s latest novel, The Nightingale, which involves the same subject.  This time, however, no young German boys were involved.  Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the Light We Cannot See, would be a hard act to follow.  Kristin Hannah has placed a close second to Doerr.

Kristin Hannah has written a slew of novels and has an impressive list of awards.  She lives in Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest with her son.

The Nightingale tells the story of two sisters.  When their mother died, their father shipped them off to boarding school.  Vianne, the elder of the two, becomes pregnant and soon marries the father of her daughter, Sophie.  Vianne’s father does not approve of the husband or the marriage, so he sends her and Sophie to a summer home in the south of France.  Meanwhile, her younger sister, Isabelle, is charming, beautiful, precocious, and very much the rebel.  She runs away numerous times, and finally is expelled from the school.  She returns to Paris and her father’s bookstore.  Then, the Nazis invade France, and chaos takes over.  Papa orders her out of the house, gives her money for a travel to Carriveau to join Vianne in what he believes to be relative safety.

Vianne’s husband leaves for the front, and is soon a P.O.W.  Shortages begin, and then the Germans arrive and occupy the town.  Vianne’s house is requisitioned by a German Captain.  She must allow him to live in her home, or Captain Beck will seize the house and expel her and Sophie.  Then Isabelle shows up.  All this occurs in the first 20 pages or so, so the meat of the plot lies sprawled before the reader.

While exciting in spots, something about the writing seemed a bit off in places.  I detected shades of a romance novel here and there, which is Hannah’s primary genre.  However, I never wanted to abandon the novel, even though I believe I subconsciously compared Hannah to Doerr.  The novel is heavy on dialogue, and I found myself wishing for more introspection, more description.  Here is a sample of Isabelle’s desperate attempt to escape Paris.  Hannah writes, “Hours passed.  The automobile made its slow, agonizing way south.  Isabelle was grateful for the dust.  It coated the window and obscured the terrible, depressing scene. // People.  Everywhere.  In front of them, behind them, beside them, so thick was the crowd that the automobile could only inch forward in fits and starts.  It was like driving through a swarm of bees that pulled apart for a second and then swarmed again.  The sun was punishingly hot.  It turned the smelly automobile interior into an oven and beat down on the women outside who were shuffling toward…what?  No one knew what exactly was happening to them or where safety lay ahead. // The car lurched forward and stopped hard.  Isabelle hit the seat in front of her.  The children immediately began to cry for their mother. // ‘Merde.’  Monsieur Humbert Muttered. // ‘M’sieur Humbert,’ Patricia said primly.  ‘The Children.’ // An old woman pounded on the car’s bonnet as she shuffled past. // ‘That’s it, then, Madame Humbert.’ he said.  ‘We are out of petrol’”  (36).

I also encountered a few phrases my creative writing class might recognize as clichés.  But despite all the minor drawbacks, it is an exciting story with lots of twists and turns.  Kristin Hannah’s latest novel, The Nightingale will certainly hold a reader’s attention all the way to the end.  4-1/2 stars.

--Chiron, 9/8/15

In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen, who is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, died this year on April 5 four days after the publication of his final novel.  In Paradise is a peculiar story.  It has the intensity of a work by an investigative journalist, with the compelling beauty of a wonderfully written novel. 

Clements Olin is an American scholar of Polish descent.  He travels to Poland to attempt to discover the identity of his mother.  He arrives to participate in a week-long retreat at Auschwitz.  Along with about 100 others, they pray, meditate, and eat and live in the quarters occupied by the German military officers in charge of the camp. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is the eclectic group of people on this retreat.  There are devout Jews and Christians, Catholic nuns and monks, a defrocked priest, atheists and believers, Germans, Poles, American, English, and French citizens.  As the week progresses, emotions bubble to the surface, and things collapse into near chaos.

Even Olin questions his right to be there, as well as his purpose as a participant.  He is not Jewish, and has no apparent connection to the Holocaust.  He has a faded picture of a woman waving out a window, whom he believes to be his mother.  The woman lived in the town near the camp.  He tries to locate the house in the picture, but the townspeople are suspicious, and Olin fears violence. 

In his inimitable style, Matthiessen describes the landscape, “The road follows the Vistula upriver westward across the frozen landscape; blue-gray hills of the Tatra Mountains and Slovakia rise in the south.  Here and there along the way stand stone houses with steep roofs to shed the snows, most of them guarded by spiked iron fences (wolves and brigands?).  These dwellings crowd the road in seeming dread of those dark ranks of evergreens that march down the white faces of the hills beyond like Prussian regiments (or Austro-Hungarian or Russian) crossing some hinterland of Bloody Poland, which has no natural boundaries against invaders” (14).

Like the landscape, In Paradise has no natural boundaries.  People are pulled in from all over the world, and most are repulsed by the physical remnants of that unspeakable horror.  I found the narrative somewhat disturbing. 

Despite the negative aspects of the story, it was profoundly absorbing.  The characters, who spoke up during the retreat, revealed individual reasons for coming to Auschwitz.  Matthiessen held my attention to the last word.  I had already seen and heard these stories many times, but Matthiessen put a new face on the evil.  He showed how the experience changed the characters – most prominently, Clements Olin himself.  If you have never read any literature of the holocaust, In Paradise represents a new look at a story that cannot, must not ever be forgotten.  5 stars

--Chiron, 7/29/14

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I never ceased to be amazed at the variety and number of narratives reminding us of the horrors of The Holocaust.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was a finalist for the 2007 Michael Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Fiction awarded annually by the American Library Association.  It has hovered near the top of my TBR for a couple of years, and when the announcement of the release of the film came, I moved it to the top.

This gripping story tells of young Leisel Meminger, whose brother has died on a train taking her to a couple in Molching, a Bavarian town near Munich for the duration of the World War II.  The train stops to remove the body for burial.  Leisel cannot bear to leave her brother behind, and she lingers near the grave.  As the time approaches to re-board the train, she finds a book -- The Grave Digger’s Handbook – dropped by one of the cemetery workers.  Leisel cannot read, but the book links her to her brother.  This is the first book she steals.  Zusak sets the story in 1939, and the knowledge of the events just over the horizon, adds a chilling depth to the story.

Her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann welcome the girl to their home.  Rosa, who does laundry for some of the wealthier local families seems annoyed at the intruder, and she quickly becomes a strict taskmaster.  Hans, a painter, immediately develops a close relationship with Liesel, and the two become good friends.  He teaches her to read and write beginning with The Grave Digger’s Handbook.  The story is narrated by death.

As the war intensifies, Rosa and Hans – barely scrapping by -- begin losing customers, food becomes scarce, and soon the war arrives in Molching.  The Hubermanns also shelter a Jewish man trying to escape Germany.  Max also develops a warm relationship with Liesel, and the two read and write in the secrecy of the basement.

Markus Zusak

I marked so many moving passages, I could write numerous versions of this review.  The Book Thief is one of those rare novels when every word touches the soul.  Despite the ominous setting, the terrible events already set in motion, there are passages of tenderness and beauty.  Zusak writes, “Steadily, the room shrank, till the book thief could touch the shelves within a few small steps.  She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book.  It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet.  She used both hands.  She raced them.  One shelf against the other.  And she laughed.  Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat, and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again.  // How many books had she touched? // How many had she felt?  She walked over and did it again, this time much slower, with her hand facing forward, allowing the dough of her palm to feel the small hurdle of each book.  It felt like magic, like beauty, as bright lines of light shone down from a chandelier.  Several times, she almost pulled a title from its pace but didn’t dare disturb them.  They were too perfect. // To her left, she saw the woman again” (135).

Heinrich Heine wrote, “Wherever they burn books, they will, in the end, also burn human beings.”  We need reminders of the horrors of war and the terrible depths to which is capable of sinking.  Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief also reminds me how precious my library really is.  5 stars

--Chiron, 1/12/14