After Thoughts — “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah
“In love, we find out who we want to be; in war, we find out who we are.”
This is a plot set in German-occupied France during the second world war. The story follows two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, as they struggle to survive and persevere through the Nazi invasion. Their parallel stories are as different as their personalities but are just as suspenseful, complicated, and emotional. As the reader, you get to see the war that was taking place on the home front from each sister’s unique point of view. It is a heart-wrenching, beautiful and tragic story.
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah offers a story of women surviving in unthinkable circumstances — the underestimated gender finding a way to take action.
The plot revolves around a question which the author mentions in her own words, “I found myself consumed with a single, overwhelming question, as relevant today as it was seventy years ago: When would I, as a wife and mother, risk my life — and more importantly, my child’s life — to save a stranger?”
The writing is so powerful. She captures the heart-breaking devastation that the Nazis inflicted on France and different communities. Nazis' destructed every aspect of life, the food was scarce, the rations brought them almost nothing, many were starving to death, being executed for no reason, and were living in absolute fear. It was so hard to read about the Jewish women and children being rounded up and deported to concentration camps, the brutal treatment, the pain & the loss.
As a reader, who doesn’t belong to that age, who didn’t witness or have any chance to even understand or empathise, I was saddened to witness the events.
This book, with its high dose of adrenaline, fear, and courage gives us the opportunity to just go back in time and witness the courage of women, the dangerous risks undertaken, acts of bravery and reinforces the fact that those who may appear weak can indeed possess incredible strength.
“Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.”
“Love. It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between.”
Thank you.
