Haven't you experienced in a long time that reading a book can bring you to tears and break your heart?
In 2015, Nightingale was published and launched, which immediately attracted widespread attention.
It has long dominated the New York Times bestseller list and touched countless readers around the world.
In 2017, Nightingale was successfully nominated for the International Dublin Awards.
Isabelle, known as the "female version of Márquez", said bluntly: "This is a work that tends to be perfect."
The author, Kristen Hannah, has a high reputation in China with "Firefly Alley".
Like Firefly Alley, Nightingale's focus remains on women.
"Nightingale" is set in France and adopts a two-line time structure.
One is reality, i.e. 1995; One is the memory of "I", i.e. 1939 to 1945.
The protagonists are sisters.
Sister Vivian, before the war came, had a happy family. She is calm, gentle and single-minded in her small family. I don't care about what's going on outside.
The onset of war destroyed her family and she had to commit herself to the Nazis.
The younger sister, Isabelle, is a beautiful and stubborn girl.
Unlike her sister, who was cowardly and selfish, Isabelle bravely fought the Nazis.
Draw victory symbols on posters, hand out leaflets, send letters of resistance, and lead foreign pilots across the Pyrenees.
Even later imprisoned in concentration camps, she was still fighting.
After experiencing the war, the sisters have a new understanding of love, home, and motherland.
As it is written in the book:
"Love, let us understand what we want to be; But war, let us see ourselves as they really are. ”
Through the encounters of two very different sisters, the author shows the reader the tenacity and greatness of women.
Vian and Isabel lost their mother at an early age, and their father sent them to the countryside to be cared for by relatives.
The two sisters have lacked the warmth of family since childhood.
"Dad discards his daughters like foul-smelling dirty clothes and throws them to a stranger."
Therefore, they are both very eager for love, but the way the two express themselves is different.
When Vivian was less than sixteen years old, she fell in love with Antoine, a postman, and the two soon married.
With a small family, Vivian is very satisfied.
However, many miscarriages after marriage made Wei Anxin exhausted. She had no intention of taking care of her young sister Isabelle any longer.
So Isabelle was sent to her father.
Her father didn't want to take her in either.
Over the next few years, she worked at various boarding schools.
Isabelle became the most troublesome student in boarding school.
In this way, she wanted to attract the attention of her father and sister, longing for them to be able to bring her to her side.
The result was disappointment after disappointment.
By the time World War II broke out, Vivian already had an eight-year-old daughter, Sophie.
At that time, the daughter was well-behaved and cute, and her husband was very fond of her.
Neighbors are their colleagues and friends.
In her happy moments, Vian also thinks of her sister Isabelle from time to time.
If it weren't for the war, Vian and Isabel might have been able to maintain that polite and awkward relationship.
Vivian's husband, Antoine, enlisted in the war.
At that time, everyone in France was in a high mood, and everyone thought that the war would soon be over.
The men will soon be able to return to their hometowns.
However, the long wait day after day, the bad news again and again, shattered everyone's dreams.
Isabel was dropped out of school, and her father still refused to take her in.
She could only go to her sister.
On the way, Isabelle meets the man who haunts her all her life, Jayodan.
Under his influence, Isabel found the direction she needed to fight for the rest of her life— resisting the invaders.
The Nazis moved into the town where Vian lived.
Vivian's home was occupied by a German officer, Captain Baker.
Vivian and Isabel were wary of him, especially when Isabel looked at him with hostility and disgust.
Although Captain Baker was German, he had a humanitarian concern for the French people.
Under his protection, the Vian family did not have to go hungry and were spared a lot of trouble.
A different affection gradually developed between Vian and Baker.
Meanwhile, Isabel is doing extremely dangerous work.
On orders from her superiors, she returned to her father's house in Paris.
Using the bookstore as cover, Isabel used the code name "Nightingale" to secretly help many foreign pilots cross the Pyrenees.
Fast forward to 1942, and the Germans began a frenzied search and abuse of Jews.
Vivian's neighbor Rachel is taken to the concentration camp, her daughter is killed, and only one son remains, who is desperately protected by Vivian.
Meanwhile, Isabelle returns to Vian's town, but the crisis is getting closer and closer to her.
In order to protect Isabel, Vivian accidentally killed Captain Baker.
In Isabelle's view, Vian had done a remarkable thing for herself, for her country.
However, the kind and weak Vivian deeply blames herself for losing a kind and benevolent partner.
Because, whether it is the French or the Germans, war is not what everyone hopes for.
Everyone is a victim of war.
Moreover, Captain Baker also had his wife and children who were waiting for him to return in Germany.
We always thought we were strong.
In the face of a brutal war, we see our own vulnerability.
At the same time, it has also inspired unprecedented power.
Shakespeare had a quote:
"Woman, your name is Fragile."
Vivian, that's the kind of woman.
However, when the cruelty of war was really placed in front of her, Vivian no longer chose to escape.
She uses her weak strength to protect her daughter Sophie and her friend's son.
The course of events is becoming increasingly uncontrolled.
Captain Baker's mysterious disappearance, though not in danger to her, was housed in the home of another German officer, Van Beck. Colonel Richter.
He was a rude and cruel man.
He occupies the best room in Vian's house, treats Vian as a servant, and scolds the children.
He even threatened Vian with the child's life to commit herself to him.
Vivian was forced to become his mistress.
Such a humiliating experience was put before, and Vivian certainly could not live.
But now she has more important things to do, more important people to protect.
During the day, she took advantage of the opportunity to teach at an orphanage and hid more than a dozen Jewish children.
Whenever someone came to her door to ask for help, Vivian was always obliged.
By 1944, the Germans were at the end of their rope. They began a more aggressive attack.
Isabel was arrested during a mission.
She stubbornly endured the Nazi torture and never uttered a word.
In order to save Isabel, his father confessed to the Nazis that he was a nightingale.
The father was brutally murdered.
Before turning himself in, the father went to Vivian and confessed to the two sisters.
On the occasion of parting, Vian said to her father the words that had long been suppressed in her heart: "I love you!" ”
As soon as the words came out, even Vivian herself felt incredible.
For so many years, she had hated her father in her heart.
If it weren't for her father's abandonment, she wouldn't have married so early, and Isabelle wouldn't have wandered.
"The daughter's love for her father will never change. It is unbearable, but it cannot be erased. ”
After so many changes, Vianne completed her redemption.
She no longer resents, no longer indulges in the past, but bravely faces reality and faces her own heart.
After her father's death, the Nazis had no intention of sparing Isabel, and they imprisoned her in concentration camps.
The inhuman torture in the concentration camp caused Isabel to suffer from severe typhus and pneumonia.
By the time the Nazis were driven out of France and Isabel was free, she was dying.
She and Vian read her father's last letter together.
"Forgive me, daughters, please forgive me for all my deeds. Let me say goodbye to you, and please understand that I, who have been wounded in my heart, have always loved your two sisters wholeheartedly. ”
This letter also made Isabel relieved.
Throughout her life, she finally waited for the long-awaited love of her father.
Moreover, this love has never disappeared, it has always been there.
War can destroy the human flesh, but it cannot destroy love.
After so many breakdowns, Vian and Isabelle found their true selves.
Before the war, they lived in three different places as a family of three.
Seemingly alienated from each other, but unbreakable love, let them find the light in the darkness.
Vivian waits for Antoine's return, only to find herself pregnant with the demon colonel's child.
The couple has been staging a good drama of loving husband and wife, and they know in each other's hearts that they will never go back to the past.
But Antoine is a good man, and although Vivian says the child is his, he has already guessed the truth.
He accepted the child.
He believed that hate can confuse people's eyes, and only love can see the future.
This child represents a new beginning in their lives.
Isabelle is taken back to Ra's house by Vian, and the sisters have just finished their lives and are facing death.
Luckily, Isabelle waited for Jayodan, the man she had loved all her life.
She died in Jayodan's arms.
Everything begins with love, and it ends with love------ he loves her, and she loves him. Throughout her life, she had been waiting, always looking forward to people's love, but now she understood what really mattered. She has learned love and is protected by love. ”
Love dissolves all pain.
Hannah's Vivian and Isabel let us see the most beautiful appearance of women.
They can bend and stretch, desperately guarding the faith in their hearts.
Like the nightingale, it symbolizes the desire for the good of life, symbolizes the desire for freedom.
Whether it is Isabelle who bravely moves forward or Vivian who bears the burden of humiliation, they are the most beautiful nightingales.