A confession. Although I read The Nightingale back when it first came out in 2015, until recently I couldn’t tell you a lot about what happened in it. I remembered I thought the first hundred pages were only so-so, but thereafter I was fully absorbed and - a rare thing for me - cried at the end. To be clear, that’s a fault with me reading too fast, not with the book.
It came as a surprise to me therefore, when I was compiling some lists of novels about sisters, that The Nightingale kept popping up. Sisters? In The Nightingale? I’d entirely forgotten them. Not only that, but there were rumors online last year that a project to bring the novel to the screen starring the Fanning sisters, Dakota and Elle, was being revived, having been shelved during Covid. Sisters playing sisters. A re-read was clearly in order.
For those yet to have the pleasure of reading this book, or like me have read and forgotten it, here are the basics. Sisters Vianne and Isabelle have always had a difficult relationship. They are ten years apart in age, and when their mother died when Vianne was fourteen and Isabelle only four, the trauma, the age difference, and the neglect of their grieving father caused wounds that have not healed. The majority of the novel is set during occupied France during WW2. Isabelle, independent, willful and angry, works in the resistance. Vianne, a mother, whose husband is at away at war, suffers through the occupation of her village and being forced to share her and her daughter’s home with Nazi officers. Alternating between the sisters’ points of view, the novel is a propulsive page-turner. The sisters’ fractured relationship is at the heart of all that unfolds and I had no problem reading the whole thing again. In fact I think I appreciated it even more the second time around.
My ‘system’ for reading books I’m reviewing or reading with a view to writing about is to use a bunch of these little transparent post-it flags. Whenever I come across something I want to remember, or quote, or refer back to later, I just stick in a little sticker and move right along. Here’s what happened with my re-read of The Nightingale:
As you can see I’ve got a stack of flags here marking quotes about sisters and important milestones in this sisterly relationship that, for me, really defines the novel and makes it such a compelling and widely-loved story. But it’s the very last flag I stuck in there that I keep circling back to. It’s from a section offered up by the publisher after the novel’s end, called A Conversation with Kristin Hannah. In it she’s asked about material that never made it to the final draft. Here’s her answer:
Ha! I wrote hundreds of pages that no one will ever read. Both Isabelle and Vianne gave me trouble in this book. Neither was easy to find and both went through several transformations through the writing of the novel. In one version, they were best friends only a year apart in age, in another version, Isabelle fell in love with a downed airman.
Wait, what? (as my eighteen-year old daughter is wont to say when she doesn’t like what she’s hearing). This would have been whole different book without the sisters’ age gap, their issues with each other, their misunderstandings and regrets. A whole different book.
But perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. There are so many ways a story can take shape, so many impactful decisions that might seem small at the time but have huge consequences. Kind of like life really.
I’ve decided I’m keeping my little flags in the book and waiting for the movie to be made so I can watch it with the book sisters fresh in my mind and see what changes or stays the same in the movie. My final thought for now is on the pleasure of re-reading. While I love a first read where I’m speeding through, all caught up in a drama, there’s something relaxing, almost comforting, about a re-read where you can savor the characters, the words, and the world-building.
Are you a re-reader? Which books have you re-read?
It definitely counts! I’ve never read The Hundred Years of Lenin and Margot but I’m thinking I should change that 😉
Does listening to a book on tape count as a reread? I read the book " The Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot" a few years ago. Then I listened to the audio version and loved the book even more the second time. Maybe it was the accents that made the audio even better.