My Pick of Top 5 WWII Fiction
If you've read any of my other posts, then you probably know how much I enjoy reading historical fiction, and of course that includes WWII novels. Over the years I've read a fair amount of books that fall under this category and watched many movies as well, but I've managed to cut down my list of WWII novels to my favorite five. These books were chosen because they moved me emotionally, they created realistic, beautiful, powerful scenery, and they sparked something within me that has kept the characters with me. Let me know in the comments below if you agree with my list!
1. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
"In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are."
If you enjoy historical fiction, then you absolutely must read this book.
I don't quite understand how Kristin Hannah can so eloquently tell a story so convincingly: you would swear she was there to experience the war for herself. The story revolves around two very different sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, who live in occupied France during the Second World War. Vianne is a mother of a young daughter, and a school teacher, whose husband has been called to the front. Kristin Hannah makes it easy for readers to feel Vianne's pain and fear as she struggles to find enough food to fill her daughter's belly and enough wood to keep a fire burning so they don't freeze to death in the winters. Vianne is soon faced with an even bigger challenge when a Nazi soldier is posted to her house where he resides in the guest bedroom.
Isabelle is a different character altogether. A young woman with a fire in her heart that cannot be extinguished, she is eager to fight against the Nazis in anyway that she can. So she joins a small group of French citizens who distribute anti-Nazi flyers, hide wounded allied soldiers, and eventually takes to leading allied soldiers and Jewish families across the mountains to safety. The intensity of the scenes gets readers' blood pumping as we fly through the words to discover if Isabelle will get caught.
I can't do this novel justice with my words - it is truly something that must be experienced. It's so beautifully written, so powerful with things that are said and unsaid, you will find yourself emotionally invested in the fate of the characters.
Goodreads gives this book a 4.6/5, which is crazy! This book is easily a 5/5 for me! I wouldn't change a single thing.
2. Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
"In WWII Italy, love was worth spying for."
In the beginning of this book, I had a difficult time getting into it. But that changed quickly at around Chapter 3 when an Italian teenage boy, Pino Lella, is sent to the mountains to live at a boy's school run by a priest after his home in Milan is destroyed by a bomb. This book, amazingly, is based on the true story of Pino, a brave young man who risked everything to help the war effort.
When Pino reaches the mountains, the Priest asks him to do something dangerous in more ways than one - he wants Pino to take Jewish families through the mountains and across the border to neutral territory, where they will be safe from the Nazis. But it's risky: there are soldiers everywhere guarding the borders, there's freezing temperatures in a harsh terrain, and there's avalanches, rocks, and steep falls.
Later, Pino finds himself working as a German soldier, much to the disgust of his friends and community members. But he didn't have much of a choice - it was either that, or go to the front where he would be killed. By chance, he is discovered by General Hans Leyers - a man who works directly under Hitler himself - who wants Pino to be his personal driver. Pino eagerly accepts, knowing that now he may be able to get close enough to Leyers to learn secrets that can help protect Italy.
This book is wonderful in every way. After reading it, I promised myself I would explore more of Mark Sullivan's work. Very nicely written, touching and emotional, intimate and personal, it manages to sneak into your very soul to remain with you. I will not soon forget Pino Lella's story and I believe much of that is owed to Sullivan's talent for weaving an intricate story.
Goodreads rates this a 4.4/5, which is slightly lower than what I would rate it. I believe this book deserves a 4.8/5.
3. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
"That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?"
This book was actually my discovery of WWII fiction and was the foundation of my love for the genre. I stumbled upon this book at a used book shop (my favorite place to find secret gems of literary genius) and this was my first Jodi Picoult book. As it turns out, it would also become my favorite of hers.
Like all Jodi Picoult books, each chapter switches between the point of view of a different character, giving the reader a full experience and allowing us to see into the minds of each main person. The story begins with a young woman, Sage, who is depressed, grieving, and hiding. She is a keen baker, a theme that continues in various parts of the book, but she is afraid of people seeing her true self (and her scarred face) so she works alone in a bakery at night, preparing treats for the next day.
At a grief group meeting, Sage meets an interesting old man named Josef, who is loved by everyone in the community. They quickly become friends, despite their obvious differences, but one day Josef asks Sage to do the impossible: to kill him. He's not sick, he explains, but quite the opposite. He seems to be invincible. He believes that God is giving him a long, healthy life as punishment for his crimes. You see, in WWII, Josef was a Nazi soldier.
The narrative includes Sage's internal dilemma as to whether or not assisting someone in death would bring about justice or if it's simply murder; as well as an investigator's struggle to find the truth of the matter; and, most importantly, Sage's Grandmother, who delves into the past to explain to Sage how she survived the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl.
The Storyteller reaches aspects of the Holocaust that are often overlooked or misunderstood, and describes them in such a way that makes the reader weep with the characters, shake and shiver at the elements, and hold their breath in fear as the Nazis loom closer. There are episodes in the ghetto, where the horrors for many began, followed by the concentration camps, and finally by the walk of death in which 4000 people left but less than 150 survived. This book will change the way you look at Holocaust survivors, Nazi soldiers (in ways that you may not expect), and what it means to be human. The Storyteller takes unforeseeable turns and the ending is both suspenseful and shocking.
Goodreads rates it a 4.3/5, but for me this is one of my favorites and must be closer to a 5.
4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
"How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?"
This book has won awards and been on bestseller's lists, is critically acclaimed, and has received fantastic reviews. It's a very descriptive book, which may turn some people off, but if you give it a chance, the imagery created allows Doerr to take readers to another time.
The story has two distinct narratives: the first is about a young girl, Marie-Laure, who went blind at a young age and whose father designed a unique model of their neighborhood in France so that she can learn the distances between buildings and how to identify landmarks through touch with the hopes that she will be able to navigate the village herself. But when WWII begins, things change rapidly as they are forced to flee their home and head for safety in a small French town where her uncle Etienne lives. Etienne seems very strange at first, for he never leaves his house and often locks himself in his room for hours at a time, but it soon becomes obvious that he's suffering from PTSD (or shell shock, as they refer to it) from his time fighting in the First World War. Once Marie-Laure's father is captured and imprisoned by German soldiers, Marie-Laure and Etienne join the French Resistance and regularly send out illegal messages through a hidden radio.
In Germany, Werner is an orphaned boy who lives with his sister at the orphanage. His prospects are bleak, for all poor boys in his town end up working in the coal mines. But when he finds a broken radio one night, he is able to repair it with ease and it soon becomes obvious that he has a skill for technology repair. This ultimately lands him in a group referred to as Hitler's Youth, which raises him with the values of a Nazi, so that when he reaches eighteen he joins the Nazi Military Elite. His job is to find those who are sending illegal radio signals. But Werner has always questioned the motives of Hitler and the Nazis, and wondered if what he is doing is right.
Marie-Laure and Werner's paths eventually cross, and her fate rests in his hands as he decides what it is to serve his country and what is it to be human. There's secret passages, a cursed and priceless jewel, a desperate German Sergeant Major, a dramatic building collapse, and bombings. All the Light We Cannot See touches on mental illness, the abilities in disability, the values that are instilled in each of us so that "right" is not a simple answer, and the power of loving another human being.
Some readers may not be satisfied with the ending of this book, but for me I believe it ended the way that was necessary. I can't say more than that without spoiling it. But I will say, it's absolutely worthy of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellent in Fiction, both of which it won in 2015. And what's more, it's worth the read. Goodreads gave this a 4.3/5, and I'd give it a 4.6/5. Way to go, Doerr! Keep them coming.
5. Atonement by Ian McEwan
"And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive."
I truly believe this book is underrated, but I can understand why. Atonement is a book you must make yourself commit to before you can uncover the good parts. I've tried to read other books of McEwan's but really just don't enjoy his writing style - I find it far too descriptive and very slow progressing (I'm a lover of lots of dialogue!), but this book was fantastic after a certain point. The novel is about a thirteen-year-old girl named Briony in 1935 who dreams of being a writer. She is an odd, but interesting character in that she seems to have a grandiose sense of self, often wondering if people contemplate life as she does, if they see the beauty in things as she does, etc. Furthermore, she has a very misconstrued perception of sex and intimacy, which leads to serious problems for those around her. The beginning quarter (or so) of the book is about Briony writing a play which she wants her three cousins to help her act out for her brother and his friends as they come home from college to visit. This doesn't go as planned, however, when she catches her sister, Cecilia, and the gardener's son, Robbie, kissing passionately and, well, basically having sex. She, for whatever reason, believes her sister would never willingly partake in such acts, so concludes that it was forced upon her. Later that evening when her cousin actually is raped by someone, Briony assumed that it must have been Robbie. What she doesn't know though is that Robbie is not only innocent, but deeply in love with her sister, Cecilia, who loves him back. So when Robbie is imprisoned for this crime, Cecilia has no one to blame but Briony.
Flash forward to WWII, where Briony is now a grown woman who has enlisted with the Red Cross to serve as a nurse and care for wounded soldiers. She does this, it is implied, to make up for the mess she has caused with Robbie and her sister. Robbie, however, was given the option of remaining in prison or joining the army to serve in France. Injured, Robbie and two other soldiers make their way to the beaches of Dunkirk where they will be evacuated. But the way to safety is long and dangerous, and even the beaches themselves are being bombed, so as Robbie makes his way through the bombing and shootings, and as his wound continues to worsen, he thinks of Cecilia and if he will see her again.
Finally, in the last part of the book, we jump forward in time once more to Briony as an old woman. She has become an accomplished writer, but she is still unhappy. She is giving an interview to explain her best-selling book, Atonement, and secrets are revealed which give us readers quite the surprise. We finally understand why Briony felt the need to search for a way to atone for what she had done, and why she struggles to let go and move on.
The book is very, very slow in the beginning, but I promise, if you stick it out, you will enjoy the rest! It's eloquent, written in a unique way, and makes you feel the fear that Robbie feels as he journeys through France. Goodreads gives this book a 3.9, but I would give it maybe a little higher, like a 4.3/5. It's good enough that it was very memorable, but not so good that I would read it again any time soon. But hey, if the slow beginning of the book is throwing you off, just watch the movie! It's pretty enjoyable, and James McAvoy stars in it so you can drool over him in a uniform during the slower bits.
Honorable Mention: War Brides by Helen Bryan
I had to include this one because I loved it! It's a very different type of WWII book, definitely catering to women, and explores the lives of five women as they try to make sense of the world as it faces off in WWII. These five women all meet in a small, rural village in England after being evacuated. There's Alice, a vicar's daughter who is innocent and doesn't believe she has many prospects outside of marrying a vicar; Evangeline, a southern girl from America who married the man that was once promised to Alice; Elsie, a very poor girl from a large family; Tanni, a young Jewish mother who fled to England when the Nazis came calling; and Frances, a rambunctious rich girl who is determined to do her part to fight this war. All five of these women become great friends and are part of the Land Girls who plow the fields to grow food in support of the war effort. It's not easy work, and most of them are unaccustomed to such manual labor, but they persevere. And when one of them is killed, they return to England as elderly ladies searching for a way to avenge their sister in war.
It's really an enjoyable, easy read and I wholly recommend it to all the female readers out there who enjoy historical fiction. Goodreads gave it a 3.8, which I believe is a pretty fair score.
1. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
"In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are."
If you enjoy historical fiction, then you absolutely must read this book.
I don't quite understand how Kristin Hannah can so eloquently tell a story so convincingly: you would swear she was there to experience the war for herself. The story revolves around two very different sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, who live in occupied France during the Second World War. Vianne is a mother of a young daughter, and a school teacher, whose husband has been called to the front. Kristin Hannah makes it easy for readers to feel Vianne's pain and fear as she struggles to find enough food to fill her daughter's belly and enough wood to keep a fire burning so they don't freeze to death in the winters. Vianne is soon faced with an even bigger challenge when a Nazi soldier is posted to her house where he resides in the guest bedroom.
Isabelle is a different character altogether. A young woman with a fire in her heart that cannot be extinguished, she is eager to fight against the Nazis in anyway that she can. So she joins a small group of French citizens who distribute anti-Nazi flyers, hide wounded allied soldiers, and eventually takes to leading allied soldiers and Jewish families across the mountains to safety. The intensity of the scenes gets readers' blood pumping as we fly through the words to discover if Isabelle will get caught.
I can't do this novel justice with my words - it is truly something that must be experienced. It's so beautifully written, so powerful with things that are said and unsaid, you will find yourself emotionally invested in the fate of the characters.
Goodreads gives this book a 4.6/5, which is crazy! This book is easily a 5/5 for me! I wouldn't change a single thing.
2. Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
"In WWII Italy, love was worth spying for."
In the beginning of this book, I had a difficult time getting into it. But that changed quickly at around Chapter 3 when an Italian teenage boy, Pino Lella, is sent to the mountains to live at a boy's school run by a priest after his home in Milan is destroyed by a bomb. This book, amazingly, is based on the true story of Pino, a brave young man who risked everything to help the war effort.
When Pino reaches the mountains, the Priest asks him to do something dangerous in more ways than one - he wants Pino to take Jewish families through the mountains and across the border to neutral territory, where they will be safe from the Nazis. But it's risky: there are soldiers everywhere guarding the borders, there's freezing temperatures in a harsh terrain, and there's avalanches, rocks, and steep falls.
Later, Pino finds himself working as a German soldier, much to the disgust of his friends and community members. But he didn't have much of a choice - it was either that, or go to the front where he would be killed. By chance, he is discovered by General Hans Leyers - a man who works directly under Hitler himself - who wants Pino to be his personal driver. Pino eagerly accepts, knowing that now he may be able to get close enough to Leyers to learn secrets that can help protect Italy.
This book is wonderful in every way. After reading it, I promised myself I would explore more of Mark Sullivan's work. Very nicely written, touching and emotional, intimate and personal, it manages to sneak into your very soul to remain with you. I will not soon forget Pino Lella's story and I believe much of that is owed to Sullivan's talent for weaving an intricate story.
Goodreads rates this a 4.4/5, which is slightly lower than what I would rate it. I believe this book deserves a 4.8/5.
3. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
"That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?"
This book was actually my discovery of WWII fiction and was the foundation of my love for the genre. I stumbled upon this book at a used book shop (my favorite place to find secret gems of literary genius) and this was my first Jodi Picoult book. As it turns out, it would also become my favorite of hers.
Like all Jodi Picoult books, each chapter switches between the point of view of a different character, giving the reader a full experience and allowing us to see into the minds of each main person. The story begins with a young woman, Sage, who is depressed, grieving, and hiding. She is a keen baker, a theme that continues in various parts of the book, but she is afraid of people seeing her true self (and her scarred face) so she works alone in a bakery at night, preparing treats for the next day.
At a grief group meeting, Sage meets an interesting old man named Josef, who is loved by everyone in the community. They quickly become friends, despite their obvious differences, but one day Josef asks Sage to do the impossible: to kill him. He's not sick, he explains, but quite the opposite. He seems to be invincible. He believes that God is giving him a long, healthy life as punishment for his crimes. You see, in WWII, Josef was a Nazi soldier.
The narrative includes Sage's internal dilemma as to whether or not assisting someone in death would bring about justice or if it's simply murder; as well as an investigator's struggle to find the truth of the matter; and, most importantly, Sage's Grandmother, who delves into the past to explain to Sage how she survived the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl.
The Storyteller reaches aspects of the Holocaust that are often overlooked or misunderstood, and describes them in such a way that makes the reader weep with the characters, shake and shiver at the elements, and hold their breath in fear as the Nazis loom closer. There are episodes in the ghetto, where the horrors for many began, followed by the concentration camps, and finally by the walk of death in which 4000 people left but less than 150 survived. This book will change the way you look at Holocaust survivors, Nazi soldiers (in ways that you may not expect), and what it means to be human. The Storyteller takes unforeseeable turns and the ending is both suspenseful and shocking.
Goodreads rates it a 4.3/5, but for me this is one of my favorites and must be closer to a 5.
4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
"How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?"
This book has won awards and been on bestseller's lists, is critically acclaimed, and has received fantastic reviews. It's a very descriptive book, which may turn some people off, but if you give it a chance, the imagery created allows Doerr to take readers to another time.
The story has two distinct narratives: the first is about a young girl, Marie-Laure, who went blind at a young age and whose father designed a unique model of their neighborhood in France so that she can learn the distances between buildings and how to identify landmarks through touch with the hopes that she will be able to navigate the village herself. But when WWII begins, things change rapidly as they are forced to flee their home and head for safety in a small French town where her uncle Etienne lives. Etienne seems very strange at first, for he never leaves his house and often locks himself in his room for hours at a time, but it soon becomes obvious that he's suffering from PTSD (or shell shock, as they refer to it) from his time fighting in the First World War. Once Marie-Laure's father is captured and imprisoned by German soldiers, Marie-Laure and Etienne join the French Resistance and regularly send out illegal messages through a hidden radio.
In Germany, Werner is an orphaned boy who lives with his sister at the orphanage. His prospects are bleak, for all poor boys in his town end up working in the coal mines. But when he finds a broken radio one night, he is able to repair it with ease and it soon becomes obvious that he has a skill for technology repair. This ultimately lands him in a group referred to as Hitler's Youth, which raises him with the values of a Nazi, so that when he reaches eighteen he joins the Nazi Military Elite. His job is to find those who are sending illegal radio signals. But Werner has always questioned the motives of Hitler and the Nazis, and wondered if what he is doing is right.
Marie-Laure and Werner's paths eventually cross, and her fate rests in his hands as he decides what it is to serve his country and what is it to be human. There's secret passages, a cursed and priceless jewel, a desperate German Sergeant Major, a dramatic building collapse, and bombings. All the Light We Cannot See touches on mental illness, the abilities in disability, the values that are instilled in each of us so that "right" is not a simple answer, and the power of loving another human being.
Some readers may not be satisfied with the ending of this book, but for me I believe it ended the way that was necessary. I can't say more than that without spoiling it. But I will say, it's absolutely worthy of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellent in Fiction, both of which it won in 2015. And what's more, it's worth the read. Goodreads gave this a 4.3/5, and I'd give it a 4.6/5. Way to go, Doerr! Keep them coming.
5. Atonement by Ian McEwan
"And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive."
I truly believe this book is underrated, but I can understand why. Atonement is a book you must make yourself commit to before you can uncover the good parts. I've tried to read other books of McEwan's but really just don't enjoy his writing style - I find it far too descriptive and very slow progressing (I'm a lover of lots of dialogue!), but this book was fantastic after a certain point. The novel is about a thirteen-year-old girl named Briony in 1935 who dreams of being a writer. She is an odd, but interesting character in that she seems to have a grandiose sense of self, often wondering if people contemplate life as she does, if they see the beauty in things as she does, etc. Furthermore, she has a very misconstrued perception of sex and intimacy, which leads to serious problems for those around her. The beginning quarter (or so) of the book is about Briony writing a play which she wants her three cousins to help her act out for her brother and his friends as they come home from college to visit. This doesn't go as planned, however, when she catches her sister, Cecilia, and the gardener's son, Robbie, kissing passionately and, well, basically having sex. She, for whatever reason, believes her sister would never willingly partake in such acts, so concludes that it was forced upon her. Later that evening when her cousin actually is raped by someone, Briony assumed that it must have been Robbie. What she doesn't know though is that Robbie is not only innocent, but deeply in love with her sister, Cecilia, who loves him back. So when Robbie is imprisoned for this crime, Cecilia has no one to blame but Briony.
Flash forward to WWII, where Briony is now a grown woman who has enlisted with the Red Cross to serve as a nurse and care for wounded soldiers. She does this, it is implied, to make up for the mess she has caused with Robbie and her sister. Robbie, however, was given the option of remaining in prison or joining the army to serve in France. Injured, Robbie and two other soldiers make their way to the beaches of Dunkirk where they will be evacuated. But the way to safety is long and dangerous, and even the beaches themselves are being bombed, so as Robbie makes his way through the bombing and shootings, and as his wound continues to worsen, he thinks of Cecilia and if he will see her again.
Finally, in the last part of the book, we jump forward in time once more to Briony as an old woman. She has become an accomplished writer, but she is still unhappy. She is giving an interview to explain her best-selling book, Atonement, and secrets are revealed which give us readers quite the surprise. We finally understand why Briony felt the need to search for a way to atone for what she had done, and why she struggles to let go and move on.
The book is very, very slow in the beginning, but I promise, if you stick it out, you will enjoy the rest! It's eloquent, written in a unique way, and makes you feel the fear that Robbie feels as he journeys through France. Goodreads gives this book a 3.9, but I would give it maybe a little higher, like a 4.3/5. It's good enough that it was very memorable, but not so good that I would read it again any time soon. But hey, if the slow beginning of the book is throwing you off, just watch the movie! It's pretty enjoyable, and James McAvoy stars in it so you can drool over him in a uniform during the slower bits.
Honorable Mention: War Brides by Helen Bryan
I had to include this one because I loved it! It's a very different type of WWII book, definitely catering to women, and explores the lives of five women as they try to make sense of the world as it faces off in WWII. These five women all meet in a small, rural village in England after being evacuated. There's Alice, a vicar's daughter who is innocent and doesn't believe she has many prospects outside of marrying a vicar; Evangeline, a southern girl from America who married the man that was once promised to Alice; Elsie, a very poor girl from a large family; Tanni, a young Jewish mother who fled to England when the Nazis came calling; and Frances, a rambunctious rich girl who is determined to do her part to fight this war. All five of these women become great friends and are part of the Land Girls who plow the fields to grow food in support of the war effort. It's not easy work, and most of them are unaccustomed to such manual labor, but they persevere. And when one of them is killed, they return to England as elderly ladies searching for a way to avenge their sister in war.
It's really an enjoyable, easy read and I wholly recommend it to all the female readers out there who enjoy historical fiction. Goodreads gave it a 3.8, which I believe is a pretty fair score.
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