Elvira ’s Reviews > The Nightingale > Status Update

Overall, it made made experience such a wide range of emotions and realize that I am slowly growing out of Young Adult and lean more toward adult fiction (I mentally compare my experience recent reading of YA and this book).
Well-written, gut wrenching, heart breaking novel that is about to stay with me for a looooong time

Turns out it was loosely based on a real story and the author changed some key elements, which feels a little bit disrespectful to the actual heroine. I prefer to look at this story as an amalgamation of general experience of French women in occupied France, at which I think (non-expert opinion) Hannah did fantastic.

The character were well written (except WHY did she constantly forget the age of her characters?! WRITE IT DOWN KRISTIN PLEASE IT IS NOT THAT HARD) didn’t feel like cardboard and felt truly human.

Additionally, I don’t think the number of women who fell victim to rape is ever discussed. It is also a horrible torture. But I don’t see honoring of these victims on par with others.

And showed me a part of life during that time from an entirely different perspective - the life under occupation. Weirdly enough, I have collected stories from different places and circumstances during 30s-40s but not under the occupation. So that was a very interesting exploration of how it was like.

I hate when writers dumb down their prose so us, feeble minded peasants would understand. So I applaud Hannah for that.
The story as a fictional novel is well structured, it kept a good pace, didn’t feel either rushed nor dragged.

The book itself was quite easy to read and had a good flow to it. A few repetitive phrases here and there but didn’t spoil the story overall. I liked that she conveyed some aspects indirectly and didn’t „talk down“ to readers.

When one looks at history from the bird‘s view (millions of people have died, millions starved, the cities were destroyed, etc) people look like dots. And that is wrong. Look at history on a human level and see the absolute devastation in the eyes of a mother who has just seen her child shot to death.

For him it is easy to separate human suffering from the numbers, statistical facts and political agenda. I‘m sure that the majority of those people defending similar policies or even AH (stands for asshole) would see how wrong their statements are and would change their outlook if they were presented with actual human stories of that time.

The little boys like him who are trying to be edgy are absolutely disgusting and the prime example of the deficiencies of how the history of that time (and many other of course) is taught.