217. Code Name Verity
Rating: ☆☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by: Nancy Sissom
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II
353 pages, published May 15, 2012
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
On October 11th, 1943, a British plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. It is piloted by English Maddie (code name Kitty Hawk) after her best friend and spy Scotswoman Julie (code name Kitty Hawk), parachuted out. Verity is arrested by the Gestapo and she’s given the choice of revealing her mission or face a painful execution. Through her confession, Julie tells the story of her friendship with Maddie and how she came to enter France as a spy for Britain.
Quotes
“I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can’t believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant.
But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.”
“KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!”
“It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, ‘You stupid ass, just wait a minute,’ and she’ll open her eyes! ‘Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time!’ But they always do.”
“A whore, we’ve established that, filthy, it goes without saying, but whatever else the hell I am, I AM NOT ENGLISH.”
“People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school everyday, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette of a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night’s air raid. But you don’t talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance.”
“What’s strange about the whole thing is that although it’s riddled with nonsense, altogether it’s true – Julie’s told our story, mine and hers, our friendship, so truthfully. It is us. We even had the same dream at the same time. How could we have had the same dream at the same time? How can something so wonderful and mysterious be true? But it is.
And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie’s written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I’m reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She’s right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can’t be landed, stuck in the climb – alive, alive, ALIVE.”
“Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don’t think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.”
My Take
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audio version of Code Name Verity (which had terrific voice work) and felt transported to World War II era England and France. While the story is crackling good, what really appealed to me was wonderful, fully drawn characters of Julie and Maddie and the development of their signature friendship. I’ve read a lot of books in the past two years that take place during World War II, but this is one of the best (see also The Nightingale).
