This novel has real
strengths and real drawbacks. It recounts suffering and resistance of two
sisters, their father, and communities of associates, friends, and loved ones
in France during the invasion and occupation by the Germans in WW II. The action is mainly set in a small country
town, but also in Paris and other rural parts of France. It portrays movingly the grinding
preservation and degradation of the French people as the war goes on with
respect to practical matters like getting enough to eat, but also to persona
feelings, like fearing for loved ones, or social and cultural loss, like the
loss of faith in society.
The prose is generally
clear and eloquent and every few pages are graced by tellingly beautiful and effective
metaphors.
Three plot lines
sometimes support and intensify one another and sometimes overlap and obscure
one another. At the heart is the story of two sisters who respond to the early
death of their mother and the emotional crippling of their father in very
different ways. One is rebellious, an
actor-outer, whereas the other bargains everything for security. Their father is himself the victim of the
trauma of serving in the French army in WW I and the early death of their
mother.
The second line of plot
is the participation mainly of the rebellious sister in the resistance to the
Germans, in particular her smuggling Allied airmen out of the country, which
provides a lot of tense scenes. The
stay-at-home sister eventually, and somewhat out of character, becomes involved
similarly in saving Jewish children.
The third line of plot is
a frame story involving an ill, old woman in Seattle in the present day. The reader's uncertainly about her relevance creates
minimal tension.
The characterization in general
is clear and moving. In the case of the sisters and their father, it reaches
beyond being clear into being unremitting. Certainly every few pages from
beginning to end the author informs us of how the sisters have responded
differently to their different lack of parenting and how they feel about one
another.
During about the time I read
this book, I read, or rather audited, Arnold Bennett's novel The Old Wives Tale. It too is about two sisters, one of whom is,
in her 19th century English fashion, rebellious and adventurous, while he other
is a stay-at-home. It establishes the
difference between these two sisters and their attitude towards one another and
their difference in the first 50 pages of a very long novel, and after that
simply lets us see how it plays out. Hannah
would've done well to follow similar strategy; we get tired of her rehashing
these family differences. The same thing
applies to their relation to their father, which Bennett establishes and anchors
its importance in the beginning of the novel.
It remains a live issue without our having to be told about it. This economy leaves Bennett free to develop a
whole world.
One of the virtues of The
Nightingale is the portrayal two German officers who are stationed in a small
town and become involved with the sisters.
The difference between the two officers is fully realized; one is a
loyal German but a decent human being troubled by the war and his role, the
other is a sadistic bastard.
I happen at the same time
to be reading another relevant novel, Heinrich Böll's group
portrait with lady, which very fully portrays the life of middle-class and
other Germans during the war, and how it changed as the war approached its end,
as Hannah
portrays so well in France. Böll's method of
characterization is very much more complex than Hannah's. Böll creates as a character an
author like an investigative reporter who compares and contrasts the various
accounts of the various characters by various other characters. Just as we don't see eye to eye on one another,
his characters do not see eye to eye on one another and he reports it. The results are a very nuanced and
multidimensional portrayal of the individuals and of their world. Hannah's focus on the
two sisters and certain aspects of their relationships seems narrow and repetitive
by comparison.
The frame story of the
ill, old woman in Seattle is a tease. The
reader comes to believe perhaps halfway through the novel that she one or the
other of the sisters and the uncertainty is only resolved at the very end. The whole frame story is unnecessary and
unlikely. Hannah never explains how she
got to Seattle many years after the main events of the novel.
The story sometimes falls
into melodrama. For example, two lovers are reunited as one is about to die, á
La Bohème.
So reading the novel was
in part frustrating. I wish the author had stopped redwelling on the family
relations, effectively established, which would have freed her cover some of
the other complex cities of the German occupation of France, for example the
role of those French who were perfectly happy to have the Germans arrive and
save them from communism and Jews. The
frame story was simply an unnecessary and improbable obstruction. But still is a moving book, with flash of
wonderful writing and a moving portrayal of the suffering of war.
