The Nightingale is a wonderful read, an eloquently written and gently told story. Unlike the last couple of WWII novels I read, this book is more of what you would expect from fiction set in a war-torn France, a book that appeals for its stories of relationships using the war and devastation to France as the backdrop.
In The Nightingale, you have the expected things that were not present in All the Light We Cannot See, namely romance and spies. But these things are not cheapened or present merely to be a standard tale. Instead, the stories here are deep and richly developed.
The writer occasionally jumps forward to present time (well, to 1995, but in my mind, that’s still present time). It’s not used so much as to jumble the narrative (unlike A God in Ruins, which left me lost at times, having to re-read paragraphs at times to reorient myself with where we were in the story). To the contrary, this time difference is used just enough to keep a layer of suspense involved, mostly because the identity of the future first person is left unknown. This invests the reader in tales of both sisters, the reader anxious to learn who has been invited to this reunion.
The Nightingale is not a light read, and I enjoyed taking my time with reading it, returning for a short time here and there to spend in her pages, soaking in the next chapter and allowing that to settle before moving forward. Although intriguing, its layers were so balanced while also complex that it never felt like a page-turner one needed to rush through. At the end of the tale, it felt complete. And it left me satisfied with the the time spent in the story.