One day, I walked into a bookstore and opened a novel casually. I found that it was a book about war. I thought it was a cliché plot again, so you were going to close it. But my eyes were caught by another line: “Men are very good at telling stories, while women will live with stories.” This sentence made me stop. It said something I had never thought of. We are used to listening to men talk about war – what kind of battle this general fought, how many people the hero saved, and when to attack and retreat, it is clear, like a schedule. But no one has ever cared about how those who stayed at home survived. Women, children, old people, don’t they have a story to tell? Or is it that no one is ever willing to listen to their stories?
I turned down another page. Another sentence jumped out: “My younger brothers are fighting on the front line, and we, who are sisters, continue to live at home. It’s not easy to live, it’s the kind of life that you have to decide whether you are a good person or a bad person every day. After reading this, I decided not to leave.Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale is about this way of living. Without the general’s plan and the soldiers’ charge into battle, there were only two ordinary French sisters fighting one invisible battle after another in their living room, kitchen and backyard. And you will read and find that their story is actually yours.
Two twin girls in troubled times, two choices
The protagonists in the book are a pair of sisters, and their personalities are very different, just like light and shadow. My sister is calm and tough. She seems weak, but she quietly does the bravest thing in the darkest moment, silently guarding a group of strangers. Although she was scared to death and couldn’t sleep every night, she still did whatever she had to do. Her hands were shaking and tears had fallen, but she didn’t stop.
My sister is delicate and stubborn. At the beginning of the story, she was full of her little love. She felt that love was the whole world and that adults didn’t understand her. She always wants to escape the suffering of war. She is reckless, impulsive and reckless. When you look at her, you want to shake her shoulder and say, “Can you be sober?” But the pusher of fate is too cruel. The war pulled her out of the pink dream. She had to grow up, lose her childishness, and learn to bear and stick to it.
The most valuable thing about this book is the feeling of “following them”. You don’t know whether they will survive. You don’t know whether their choice is right or wrong. You don’t even know if there will be a chance to see them continue talking when you turn to the next page tomorrow.
The song of the nightingale is never limited to one person
“Nightingale” is my sister’s code name, which is the name she used when she did the resistance movement. As you read it, you will find that the title of this book should not belong to her alone. My sister’s nightingale rushed forward, brave, dazzling, roaring, like a fire. She climbed mountains to save the pilot. She shouted to the Germans that “France will never give in”. Her story was later written in the newspaper and told at the party.
You can’t see your sister’s nightingale. Her battlefield is not in the mountains and forests, nor is it under the gun. Her battlefield is by the stove in the kitchen, on the dining table in the living room, in the heartbeat of every knock on the door. She didn’t have a medal. No one knew who she had saved. She even planned not to say it for the rest of her life. Can you say that she is worse than her sister? My sister’s protection is like a fire, and my sister’s protection is like a candle. The light is not too bright, but you can’t imagine how the family will survive one night after another without that light.
So “Nightingal” is not a code name. Some people sing in the open, and some people listen in the dark; some people protect strangers with their lives, and some people protect their families with their whole lives. No one is more noble, because in such an era, everyone who chooses not to run away is a nightingale. You will find that you can’t easily judge Vianne’s early compromises, because you are not sure whether you can do better. This is a particularly precious reading experience – it allows you to see the complexity of human nature, rather than simply distinguishing between good and bad.
Stick to your own nightingale song
The moment I closed the book, the wind outside the window seemed to become gentler. I suddenly understood why we read such a story, not to relive the suffering of war, but to see the most moving power hidden in the ordinary. In our life, we may not experience such troubled times, and we will not face such life-and-death choices, but we will always have our own “battlefield” – the struggle when we are confused, and the moment when we have to shoulder the responsibility. Just like Vianne and Isabelle, we are also afraid of hesitation and want to give up, but in those moments that we are obviously vulnerable but still choose to guard, we have also become our own “nightingale”.
This book tells us that heroes are never born, but grow slowly in day by day; the song of the nightingale never fights alone, but the glimmer of countless ordinary people gathers together to illuminate the darkness. If you also occasionally feel tired and feel that your persistence is meaningless, if you also want to see what kind of courage and tenderness ordinary people can have, you might as well open The Nightingale. Believe me, you will find your own shadow in the story of these two French sisters, and you will also find the strength to keep moving forward.
