I wonder what Shakespeare would have thought about Audiobooks…  His verse, transcends the page and through the ear stabs the heart and imbues the soul.  One need not see Shakespeare’s work to appreciate its fullness, but one can listen, oh one can listen indeed…  Which brings me to my point, and a new component to my blog, the Audiobook! 

Being grounded in classics and current within the mass market means reading thousands of pages.  To manage this issue I have added the audiobook to my reading regimen and boy am I glad that I did!

Now I can run and listen to “Madame Bovary”, do the laundry and drive to “The Nightingale” and I am plowing through those pages leaving nothing unfinished or unturned.  Audiobooks leave me looking forward to the mundane minutia of home life sans family.

I am using the public library’s program, Overdrive and have downloaded the app onto my phone, but there are other technological opportunities as well.  It depends on what technology you have and on what your reading needs are. 

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah  

🖊 🖊 🖊 🖊 🖊   Five Pens

Beautifully, read by Polly Stone, reader/listeners are transported to Carriveau, France, 1939, as war falls upon Europe and families are torn apart.  Men are drafted and women are left behind to sustain everything else.

As narrative time moves forward and backward we learn of Vianne and Isabelle, sisters who’ve lost their mother and their father unable to care for them sends them to a crotchety neighbor.  Thus begins the tearing apart of their family…

Vianne who becomes pregnant and married to Antoine at 16, cleaves to her family estate and chooses to remain there awaiting her husband’s return. Isobel joins the war effort and enters a secret group who spy, protect and return soldiers to safe boundaries.  She is named”The Nightingale” as her code name to signal insiders of her comings and goings within invaded and war-torn France.

Everything atrocious that can be told of World War II and the Nazi party is told in this work.  Families are ripped apart, homes are burned to the ground, men are beaten to death and women and children are harmed in every way possible.  Also illustrated is the resilience and survival of nation holders and the fighting and protest of not nearly enough others.  It is hard to discern beauty in the context of this story, but when it comes to the flourish of words, Kristin Hannah has this down and the audiobook version of “The Nightingale” gracefully and with keen detail delivers this beautifully.

I recommend the audiobook version wholeheartedly because the burden of being still, quiet and staring is lifted for us busy-doers and we can relish in the beauty and significance a writer weaves within the world of words.  Give it a listen!