Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Aug. 11th, 2012 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreads
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth WeinMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I can’t talk about this book. Which is a problem, because all I really want to do is shake people violently by the shoulders and shout at them about it.
It’s – okay, bring on the empty useless NY Times review vocabulary – it’s extraordinary. Searing. By which I mean it hurt like hell, and the mark is going to be there for a while. It got me early, somewhere around "I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.” It spit me back out a day and a half later, adrenalized and exhausted, sitting on a train pressed and primped for court and biting hard into my hand to stop myself crying too much.
Okay. Actual useful content. Though like I said, you want to go into this knowing as little as possible. At least one publisher’s summary I’ve seen would be too spoilery, in my opinion. This is a war story set in England and France in the early 1940’s. A women's war story. Only not like that. Crap. Okay. Start over.
It’s about resistance, and breaking resistance, and torture and terror,
,and flying planes at night with no lights and no maps,,,, and doing what you have to do when there are no options left,, and being best friends with the girl who is nothing like you, and guys, seriously, it brings the ladies like the ladies have rarely been brought.
It is an emotional wallop, but it is also subtle, meticulous, beautifully written, and Wein’s afterword puts such a perfect thematic capstone on this sort of fictionalized history. This book told the truth, heh, yes it did.
*hand gestures* Just. Go read it so I can stop being pointlessly vague and I’ll have people to talk to about it.
View all my reviews
spoilers in comments even more than usual.
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Date: 2012-08-12 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-12 01:25 am (UTC)*clicks to Kindle version*
*buys*
*girds loins, grits teeth and takes a deep breath.....*
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Date: 2012-08-12 01:35 am (UTC)I am currently driving my gf nuts, since she is a little over halfway through and I keep being all "are you done yet? what part are you at? I love how -- argh, spoilers!"
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Date: 2012-08-12 03:59 am (UTC)We're having the inverse problem over here. I have finally convinced Mike to let me read him Force Over Distance (Stargate Universe fanfic that was recced to me here by the awesome raspberryhunter!). I think he's only letting me do it because it's the best way to avoid me saying, "HERE'S A GREAT PART! A FUNNY PART! A PERFECT CHARACTER MOMENT! OMG THIS IS SO AWESOME, DON'T YOU WANT TO HEEEEEEEEEAR IT????"
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Date: 2012-08-13 04:07 am (UTC)(oh, um, I guess you're already reading it. Carry on!)
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Date: 2012-08-26 05:52 pm (UTC)