Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale Broke Me and Then Healed Me: Book Review
Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale took longer than usual to finish, because of how many times I had to put it down to ponder the circumstances put forward by the author. Set during the Holocaust, the book brings forward the sacrifices of women during those turbulent times that have hardly made headlines, and deserves to be on your table.
EMOTIONAL HEALTHBOOK REVIEW
DEEPUNGSU PANDIT
10/30/20265 min read
I recently finished Kristian Hannah’s acclaimed novel, The Nightingale. The book took longer than usual to finish, because of how many times I had to put it down to ponder the circumstances put forward by the author.
The Nightingale is based on one the darkest chapters of human history and speaks of the inhuman torture inflicted on Jews by the Nazis, and the common folk who resisted them. As someone who is deeply moved by Holocaust literature, it was always going to end up on my desk.
While this is merely a fiction, the fact that it is based on the lives, troubles, sorrows and sacrifices of real people is what makes it a moving read.
If one manages a peek at my bookshelf, they will notice the gracious amount of holocaust literature strewn among the more modest titles. From The Diary of a Young Girl to The Book Thief. From the Tattooist of Auschwitz to The Book of Lost Names. From the heart-wrenching Boy In The Stripped Pyjamas to my favourite, All The Light We Cannot See, I am deeply moved by the pains endured by ordinary men and women and their ability to stay sane in the face of unimaginable hate.
Set in the same era, The Nightingale brings forward the sacrifices of women during those turbulent times that have hardly made headlines, and deserves to find a place on your bookshelf.
Real Characters keep The Nightingale moving
While Vianne and Isabelle may have emerged from the author’s imagination, they are based on countless real women who fought equally hard for what was right.
The right to live.
For instance, the character of Isabelle is reportedly based on Andrée de Jongh, a young Belgian woman who created an escape network for downed Allied pilots through Nazi-occupied Europe towards safety. Known as the Comet Line, this route played a major role in the rise of the Allied forces, who ultimately triumphed over Hitler’s hate.
Andrée de Jongh personally helped people get across to the safe zone, putting her life in danger and showing extraordinary courage. Kristin Hannah pays a beautiful tribute to the Belgian in Isabelle, who is both feisty and soft, who cares as much as she needs to be cared.
Vianne’s character, on the other hand, is less exotic, less flashy, ordinary even. But it is also ordinary men and women and their ability to display extraordinary courage in the face of despair that help keep hope alive during the dark times.
The hardship and torture, both mental and physical, endured by Isabelle’s sister is one that was suffered by millions of common women across Nazi-occupied land during the Second World War. In their little ways – sheltering fleeing Nazi prisoners, saving children, working as spies and couriers – these extraordinary yet simple women ensured that all was not lost in the face of hate.
Hate has the power to consume the world
It is believed that between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis murdered over six million Jews. Sit back and think of that number in your head. Try to imagine each number as a face. It is not possible.
But destroying them and their future was.
The Nightingale puts the spotlight on the tremendous amount of cruelty that had engulfed Europe. The hate that had almost consumed the world. And how did this hate emerge? Was every person involved a monster, or were they transformed into believing something vile by calculated propaganda?
A cruelty of that scale is not possible without blind hatred. Blind hatred was generated through an organised system that made people believe that it was okay to hurt others simply because of their race, their colour, their religion and their beliefs.
Children were snatched from their parents. Families were wiped out. Generations were traumatised. Hate, if allowed to proliferate, has the ability to consume the world and destroy everything beautiful.
This is something that is also true in the present world, where people continue to be divided based on their religion, their beliefs and their race.
Hope prevails even in the darkest of times
The Nightingale paints a horrific picture of the holocaust. Empty houses. Broken people. Ravaged lives. It is a world of black and white and grey, full of malnourished people dressed in rags, clutching at straws of hope.
Yet Kristin Hannah also adds the right colour among the monochromatic pages to send a powerful reminder – Love has the ability to triumph over hate. Love reigns supreme even in the darkest of times, and hope is its biggest ally.
Love inspired Isabelle to walk on a perilous path. Love provided Vianne the strength to withstand unimaginable cruelty with a smile. The seeds of love in the hearts of the millions of suffering people generated saplings of hope and eventually defeated hate.
The author asks a very realistic question in her reflections at the end of the book – “When would I, as a wife and mother, risk my life and my son’s life to save a stranger?”
What would we have done in such circumstances? Would I have been able to be this strong? To risk everything to save strangers, neighbours, and children? It is a question, thankfully, we do not have to answer, even though the answer may be staring us in the face.
Because people also put others ahead of themselves during those times. They helped their neighbours, they laid down their lives for strangers, they shielded children and the old. Even with death staring them in the face, they showed the strength of the human spirit.
What we can do now is choose to be human. We can refuse to dehumanise people today, we can refuse to differentiate people over caste, religion, beliefs, ethnicity. We can speak up against cruelty, against hate. We can stop concentrating on ourselves and give importance to others' sufferings as well.
We can also teach the same to our children and help them create a better world.
The women who inspired Kristin Hannah to write The Nightingale lived through an unforgiving world yet refused to give up. They spent their last breath trying to preserve the little good that remained. It is because of their sacrifices that there is still humanity left in the world today.
And we must honour them by ensuring love always triumphs over hate.