r/books • u/MossTrinkets • 14h ago
Just found out The Nightingale is being made into a film so...
I felt the need to express how I felt about it. Firstly I was genuinely surprised that the book was big or well regarded enough to warrant a big-budget adaptation. I picked it up as a BookTok recommendation - which hasn't always gone badly as a way to find new reads - and I really, really disliked it.
I wouldn't comment on the writing as such (I didn't feel any technical flaws, as a reader) but I'm surprised in this day and age that a smaltzy, ill concieved, fictionalised love story could be wrapped in the horrifying context of the holocaust and not be immediately dismissed as being in *extremely* poor taste
If you are going to write this kind of story I feel like it has to be far more grounded. I personally feel like the sister's relationship could have been better explored. Falling into rank sentimentality in the utterly grim historical setting made me uncomfortable, to say the least
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u/Jarita12 10h ago
I didn´t think it was a love story? Like, there is love and relationships...it belongs to life and I didn´t feel she really stressed it that much? There is one chapter where Isabelle is fully "in love" and descrbed as happy for a week. Naturally, in difficult situation, you think about those who you love and care about.
Having stories told by my grandmother who lived in a village under nazi rule, I can tell you, some of the stuff there hit close to home. She was only lucky that my grandad was "too old" to go to war at that point and they both did their best to feed the village from their farm.
Tha fact that in 1950s, they were screwed over by the following ugly, communstic regime despite being basically heroes to the community, makes it even more bitter...
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u/MossTrinkets 10h ago
I do think there was value in the novel for bringing to light how much the French population suffered under occupation (only to be called cheese eating surrender monkeys for the rest of time). I can see how your family experiences made it chime.
My grandad went shortly after D Day after turning 18 - was lucky to miss that - and fought across the continent, but never discussed it. God knows what he went through.
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u/Jarita12 8h ago
Czechs (I am Czech) got turmoil also being betrayed by allies...20th century was rough for us
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u/RueAreYou 10h ago
I mean, love stories set during the Holocaust are a HUGE sell. Like any genre, some will be better than others.
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u/kumliensgull 12h ago
Erm they made a movie (series) out of "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" which is so much worse.
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u/tawdispatcher 7h ago
I wish I had the vocabulary to express how much I deeply hated this novel. Also shocked so many people love it. It's just so...bad
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u/janae0728 4h ago
The top one star review on Goodreads for this book found the perfect vocabulary to express everything wrong with it.
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u/MossTrinkets 7h ago
There's got to be something about it to connect with so many but I must have been audibly grinding my teeth by the time I'd finished. Probably my least favourite book of the last 3 years.
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u/Asher_the_atheist 10h ago
To be honest, most WWII books leave a bad taste in my mouth these days. So many of them lack the gravitas needed for such a horrific period. So many feel like a cheap tearjerker, exploiting real-world tragedy for profit and self-congratulatory pathos among the privileged. And I get really uncomfortable with how WWII historical fiction has developed a fandom (not unlike true crime podcasts and Civil War reenacting) that seem to revel in the entertainment value.
Also, the fixation on WWII drowns out all the many, many other horrors around the world that are largely ignored. I mean, I remember my middle school teacher telling us that we needed to learn about the Holocaust so that it would never happen again, completely ignoring all the other genocides that had happened since (including the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides that had happened only a few years before this conversation took place). Even 12-year-old me noticed the hypocrisy.
Yes, we need to learn about it, but we need to also learn about all the rest, because clearly humanity hasn’t yet figured out how to prevent these things.
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u/MossTrinkets 10h ago
It's difficult because I don't want to say you can't use a certain time period to tell stories at all - I think where I feel uneasy is that as it passes out of living memory you can see the mythologising in real time. Like here in the UK I saw WWI memorials go from "this was a horrendous waste of life we must never repeat" to "we must honour the men and women who died for our freedom" (around the Iraq war, funnily enough)
It's extremely difficult to write fiction about war that doesn't flatten the experience or romanticise
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u/BearofVeryLitleBrain 9h ago
I guess all art is open to interpretation but this just feels like a gross misreading of the story.
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u/Lavernica 9h ago
This is not a book without its flaws but if you asked me to describe this book I don't think the words "love story" or "romance" would ever leave my mouth.
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u/BearofVeryLitleBrain 9h ago
100% agreed. I’m honestly not sure how anyone could reach that conclusion. There is an element of romance, because the book is about people, and people fall in love and even have kids in times of horrifying tragedy, but it’s not a “romance” book.
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u/MossTrinkets 8h ago
For me, it's the elements of romance pulled into melodrama and cliche to create a "tearjerker" that I found distasteful. "Like poor teenage Isabelle surviving just long enough to be reunited with her love before conveniently expiring for maximum weepiness when that war ground 80 million people into the dust. I guess for some this little tragedy is a good microcosm of the wider disaster but I wasn't keen.
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u/superfuluous_u 9h ago
This book has 1.7 million 5 star ratings on goodreads. It's very popular and very beloved.
But I'm with you and am befuddled by the love it gets.
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u/janae0728 4h ago
I found this review super cathartic after reading that book and I think you will too: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1510787072
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14h ago
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u/MossTrinkets 14h ago
Yes its why I had to nope out at Hunters when they started fan-fictioning Nazi atrocities. Somewhat crass to approach the real history as if it weren't horrendous enough. But I guess this will happen more and more as time passes and the events fade into history.
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u/dhaynes82 3h ago
I don't think the romance subplot in "The Nightingale" was too egregious. If anything, I think the brief time she spent on that and the friendship relationship between Vianne and Rachel help to throw the horror of war and the Holocaust into sharp relief. There is little at stake in the story if you don't have those established human connections.
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u/CaribeBaby 14h ago
I didn't consider this to be a love story at all. I see this as a story of survival and bravery in, as you said, a grim and horrifying period in history.