The Nightingale By Kristin Hannah Summary

To say the least, it was not hard to figure why Kristin Hannah’s novel that detailed how two sisters dealt with the Nazis Occupation won so many awards. Hannah crafted a masterpiece from the words spilled on the cream pages. The author displayed so elegantly and tearfully the elements of forbidden attractions, tragic deaths, and horrid atrocities in her novel. In addition to reliving the events of an occupied frame through the eyes of a young Vianne, the reader also is granted the experience of seeing the world through an aged Vianne. “The Nightingale has sung”(Hannah). Indeed, it was a sorrowful, yet contained aspects of triumph in its melody.
In my opinion, it was safe to say that the frame of the “unknown” narrator was quite intriguing. Uniquely, Hannah wove into her novel a perspective from Vianne, as the reader later on concurred. Sadly, the older Vianne only cut briefly into the storyline from time to time. Although that might be true, Hannah managed to say so much, in so little. Indeed, this surprising frame was able to add another intricate layer to the already wondrous plotline. In my opinion,
the novel would have been lost, or at the very least diminished in quality, without this narrator’s point of view. One aspect that was near critical for the storyline to be intriguing was mystery.
It just so happened that Vianne’s frame from the future delivered exactly the correct amount of mystery the reader potentially longed for. Right off the back, the reader is drawn to the mystery aspect when the “unnamed” narrator’s son asked who Juliette Gervaise was”(Hannah, p. 4). Instantly, questions popped into one’s mind, most echoing what the son desired to know. In addition, the reader was immersed into the novel’s mystery when the future Vianne referred to the “secret she kept, the man she killed, and the one she should have” (Hannah, p. 146). Once again, the reader’s scramble to figure out how the notions from the future, connected with the events from the past. Soon enough, throughout the storyline, those connections from the shadows are drawn to the
light.
Truly, the frame granted the reader vitals pieces of the story that may, or may not have been left out during the retelling of the narrator’s past. It also allowed one to see how no matter what, love triumphs over tragedy: a theme that was well represented through the storyline. The older Vianne stated, “I close my eyes and remember: Isabelle standing with Gaeton, her arms around him, her eyes shining with tears and love. Then she closed her eyes, saying something none of us could hear and took her last breath in the arms of the man who loved her” (Hannah, p. 434). Not only that, but she also stated, “my Sophie knew how to love, and when the cancer came for her, she wasn’t afraid. At the end, I was holding her hand when she closed her eyes and greeted my deceased sister” ( Hannah, p. 434). However, it also informed us of who lived: like Gaeton, who incidentally has a daughter named Isabelle. In addition, Ariel De Champlain “survived and never forgot what Sophie and Vianne did to save his life” (Hannah, p. 437-38). .One could almost stretch to pronounce that this frame was a way of Hannah providing closure for this novel. Indeed, she mostly does so in quite the flourish. “We remain” (Hannah, p. 438). That statement was potentially the truest of them all. Despite everything that Vianne suffered through, she remained.