I'm gonna be released from behind these lines
Ugh, it's bad enough I had to be at work at 7:45, which meant getting up at 6:30, but waking up every hour before that to make sure I didn't miss my alarm? That was overkill. Bleh.
In between all that waking up, I dreamt that I was on vacation with
devildoll and we went swimming! And then I dreamt that I got a peek at Agent Coulson's notes about the Avengers. They were very neat. All I remember is that it said "Loki? -> Hulk. Hulk? -> Thor?" so I guess he was trying to figure out who would beat who in a fight how to eliminate or minimize threats. Because the same thing that makes Hulk so terrifying to Natasha makes him extremely effective against Loki, i.e., he can't be manipulated with words, so Loki's famed silver tongue is to no avail.
I was also all wound up because of the hockey game - my attention span for anything else when hockey is on is minimal, which is why I spent most of the evening (I got home from work late) organizing my tumblr queue. Ah, mindless indulgence.
The game was just salt in the wound. I finished Code Name Verity right before it started and cried my eyes out. THIS IS NOT OKAY, MS. WEIN. WHO THINKS THAT IS OKAY? OH, JULIE. OH, MADDIE. OH MY HEART. (this is where the GROSS SOBBING gif would be if this were tumblr.)
I was already teary through some of it, but when Julie shouted, "KISS ME, HARDY," I completely lost it. And then IT JUST KEPT GOING. MADDIE HAD TO KEEP GOING. JUST FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE. OH MY HEART. And then she had to tell Jamie and Julie's mum and be questioned by the Machiavellian Intelligence Officer and then it turned out the old lady gardener was actually Julie's great-aunt and Maddie couldn't tell her that they'd buried her grand-niece in her garden and I lost it again.
Okay, that was the emotional spoilers part. Now I will try to talk a little coherently about the book and how I need to reread it, knowing what happens, because it's really brilliantly done.
ANYWAY. I think most people should go into this book unspoiled though if you have triggers or sensitivities about Nazis, you should probably have someone vet it for you or read spoilery posts about it. Or you can ask me, and I will try to answer.
The basic premise is, in the UK during WWII, two young women become unlikely girlfriends best friends. One is a spy. One is a pilot. The spy is captured by the Gestapo. That's where it begins. (I don't feel like that's spoiling because it's the blurb on the book, and that was basically what I knew going in - actually, I don't think I even knew one was a pilot. I knew there were two young women during WWII and one was a spy.) As a side note, I totally ship them. Girlslashiness abounds.
This is a story about friendship and love and loss and war and loyalty and bravery and determination in the face of tragedy, and it's also a story about stories - how we tell them, how they shape us, how we use them to see the world and to present ourselves to other people - and in this case, specifically written stories. I think it's brilliantly done, in addition to being smart and moving and emotionally involving.
Now I'm going to talk about actual plot points, including the major climax of the story, so unless you really feel the need to be spoiled, given the subject matter, don't click.
I like how we're immediately in the room with Julie, how the story she's writing feels real even if the details turned out to be false. How she needs to separate herself from Queenie, from Maddie, from her own life story, in order to be able to tell it, and of course, as we learn later on, to embed code in it in case it ever gets to its intended recipient (beyond the Gestapo officer who's making her write it, of course). I also really liked the stuff about pens and ink and paper, the supplies necessary to keep writing and the odd objects Julie wrote on when she didn't have paper or couldn't use it (the scarf, her hand).
I didn't know how much to believe Julie's assertion that she'd broken, that she was collaborating and giving up real information. I didn't want to believe it, because of course we want our heroes to be strong and good and not give up secrets even under torture, but I thought if it were true, it was an interesting tack to take with your heroine and POV character.
Of course, it wasn't true. Julie is the most reliably unreliable narrator I've run into in a while. But she's knowingly (brilliantly) unreliable and to a purpose. This is why rereading multiple times should prove especially rewarding.
I think the first time I cried was at the end of Julie's section, where she repeats, I have told the truth over and over again.
And then in Maddie's section we see how much of Julie's story is actually factual (as opposed to being emotionally true if not factual in the details) - Julie thinks Maddie is dead - and how it looks unfiltered by Julie's embroidery.
And we get the other side of the story of those photographs of the plane crash - real pictures but with a dead German sentry wearing Maddie's clothes, and a bunch of useless equipment that looks like eleven wireless sets even though the cargo of the flight was actually explosives. So Julie thinks Maddie is dead but she also knows the cargo in the plane was not wireless sets, so she ends up giving eleven sets of false code to the Nazis. Everyone in prison with her thinks she's a collaborator, but she only appears to be one, just like Maddie only appears to be dead. And Anna Engel turns out to be a willing to be a double agent and work with the Resistance. and the Thibault family ends up having a son who actually is a collaborator - one of the people interrogating Julie in fact - which makes the perfect cover for the fact that they are part of the Resistance.
And when Maddie finally reads through Julie's story, she figures out how they can take the prison out, because Julie's laid it all out for her, but only she would be able to see it.
The thing is, for a story that spends its first half being about a woman being tortured by Nazis (it's... not terribly graphic but it also isn't glossed over, so if that's a trigger... also, later on there are threats of rape), it's still pretty funny, though some of it is absolutely gallows humor.
Of course, one bit of humor - Julie's joke about Nelson's last words being, "Kiss me, Hardy!" comes back at the book's big climactic moment, when Maddie and the French Resistance blow up a bridge and try to rescue the POWs being shipped to a concentration camp - Julie among them - and it all goes pear-shaped. The Nazis kill some of the prisoners outright to force a standoff, and then they start "playing" with the others - shooting out their knees and elbows without killing them. And then they threaten to "play" with Julie, and Maddie makes her presence known and then Julie requests that Maddie kill her quickly instead of letting it happen (using the phrase, "Kiss me, Hardy!"). And Maddie does.
Man, I am getting all teary just writing this post. Maddie's refrain to herself throughout the book - as Julie said to her early on - is "Just fly the plane, Maddie," i.e., just get through what's in front of you and worry about the rest later. Maddie spends the rest of the book telling herself that, because even though she knows she did the right thing - did what Julie asked of her - she still has to live with the fact that she killed her best friend. SHE STILL HAS TO GO ON. And she does. Because life does. JUST FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE.
I can't even. I don't want to start sobbing at my desk. I had a terrible headache last night after all the crying I did.
This is why I need the Captain America crossover where Julie survives and becomes a supersoldier and has many spyventures with Maddie and Peggy Carter after the war.
ANYWAY. I'm not sure any of that actually makes sense? But I highly recommend this book.
Lastly, while I was getting dressed this morning - in dim light because it takes forever for those spirally bulbs to get to full brightness - it turns out that the black pants and the black suit jacket I threw on are not, in fact from the same suit and the blacks don't match. Oops? I don't think anyone else has noticed.
You know I choose my subject lines from whatever song is playing when I finish writing the post right? I am amused at how this one turned out. iPod oracle indeed.
*
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/468254.html.
people have commented there.
In between all that waking up, I dreamt that I was on vacation with
devildoll and we went swimming! And then I dreamt that I got a peek at Agent Coulson's notes about the Avengers. They were very neat. All I remember is that it said "Loki? -> Hulk. Hulk? -> Thor?" so I guess he was trying to figure out who would beat who in a fight how to eliminate or minimize threats. Because the same thing that makes Hulk so terrifying to Natasha makes him extremely effective against Loki, i.e., he can't be manipulated with words, so Loki's famed silver tongue is to no avail.
I was also all wound up because of the hockey game - my attention span for anything else when hockey is on is minimal, which is why I spent most of the evening (I got home from work late) organizing my tumblr queue. Ah, mindless indulgence.
The game was just salt in the wound. I finished Code Name Verity right before it started and cried my eyes out. THIS IS NOT OKAY, MS. WEIN. WHO THINKS THAT IS OKAY? OH, JULIE. OH, MADDIE. OH MY HEART. (this is where the GROSS SOBBING gif would be if this were tumblr.)
I was already teary through some of it, but when Julie shouted, "KISS ME, HARDY," I completely lost it. And then IT JUST KEPT GOING. MADDIE HAD TO KEEP GOING. JUST FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE. OH MY HEART. And then she had to tell Jamie and Julie's mum and be questioned by the Machiavellian Intelligence Officer and then it turned out the old lady gardener was actually Julie's great-aunt and Maddie couldn't tell her that they'd buried her grand-niece in her garden and I lost it again.
Okay, that was the emotional spoilers part. Now I will try to talk a little coherently about the book and how I need to reread it, knowing what happens, because it's really brilliantly done.
ANYWAY. I think most people should go into this book unspoiled though if you have triggers or sensitivities about Nazis, you should probably have someone vet it for you or read spoilery posts about it. Or you can ask me, and I will try to answer.
The basic premise is, in the UK during WWII, two young women become unlikely girlfriends best friends. One is a spy. One is a pilot. The spy is captured by the Gestapo. That's where it begins. (I don't feel like that's spoiling because it's the blurb on the book, and that was basically what I knew going in - actually, I don't think I even knew one was a pilot. I knew there were two young women during WWII and one was a spy.) As a side note, I totally ship them. Girlslashiness abounds.
This is a story about friendship and love and loss and war and loyalty and bravery and determination in the face of tragedy, and it's also a story about stories - how we tell them, how they shape us, how we use them to see the world and to present ourselves to other people - and in this case, specifically written stories. I think it's brilliantly done, in addition to being smart and moving and emotionally involving.
Now I'm going to talk about actual plot points, including the major climax of the story, so unless you really feel the need to be spoiled, given the subject matter, don't click.
I like how we're immediately in the room with Julie, how the story she's writing feels real even if the details turned out to be false. How she needs to separate herself from Queenie, from Maddie, from her own life story, in order to be able to tell it, and of course, as we learn later on, to embed code in it in case it ever gets to its intended recipient (beyond the Gestapo officer who's making her write it, of course). I also really liked the stuff about pens and ink and paper, the supplies necessary to keep writing and the odd objects Julie wrote on when she didn't have paper or couldn't use it (the scarf, her hand).
I didn't know how much to believe Julie's assertion that she'd broken, that she was collaborating and giving up real information. I didn't want to believe it, because of course we want our heroes to be strong and good and not give up secrets even under torture, but I thought if it were true, it was an interesting tack to take with your heroine and POV character.
Of course, it wasn't true. Julie is the most reliably unreliable narrator I've run into in a while. But she's knowingly (brilliantly) unreliable and to a purpose. This is why rereading multiple times should prove especially rewarding.
I think the first time I cried was at the end of Julie's section, where she repeats, I have told the truth over and over again.
And then in Maddie's section we see how much of Julie's story is actually factual (as opposed to being emotionally true if not factual in the details) - Julie thinks Maddie is dead - and how it looks unfiltered by Julie's embroidery.
And we get the other side of the story of those photographs of the plane crash - real pictures but with a dead German sentry wearing Maddie's clothes, and a bunch of useless equipment that looks like eleven wireless sets even though the cargo of the flight was actually explosives. So Julie thinks Maddie is dead but she also knows the cargo in the plane was not wireless sets, so she ends up giving eleven sets of false code to the Nazis. Everyone in prison with her thinks she's a collaborator, but she only appears to be one, just like Maddie only appears to be dead. And Anna Engel turns out to be a willing to be a double agent and work with the Resistance. and the Thibault family ends up having a son who actually is a collaborator - one of the people interrogating Julie in fact - which makes the perfect cover for the fact that they are part of the Resistance.
And when Maddie finally reads through Julie's story, she figures out how they can take the prison out, because Julie's laid it all out for her, but only she would be able to see it.
The thing is, for a story that spends its first half being about a woman being tortured by Nazis (it's... not terribly graphic but it also isn't glossed over, so if that's a trigger... also, later on there are threats of rape), it's still pretty funny, though some of it is absolutely gallows humor.
Of course, one bit of humor - Julie's joke about Nelson's last words being, "Kiss me, Hardy!" comes back at the book's big climactic moment, when Maddie and the French Resistance blow up a bridge and try to rescue the POWs being shipped to a concentration camp - Julie among them - and it all goes pear-shaped. The Nazis kill some of the prisoners outright to force a standoff, and then they start "playing" with the others - shooting out their knees and elbows without killing them. And then they threaten to "play" with Julie, and Maddie makes her presence known and then Julie requests that Maddie kill her quickly instead of letting it happen (using the phrase, "Kiss me, Hardy!"). And Maddie does.
Man, I am getting all teary just writing this post. Maddie's refrain to herself throughout the book - as Julie said to her early on - is "Just fly the plane, Maddie," i.e., just get through what's in front of you and worry about the rest later. Maddie spends the rest of the book telling herself that, because even though she knows she did the right thing - did what Julie asked of her - she still has to live with the fact that she killed her best friend. SHE STILL HAS TO GO ON. And she does. Because life does. JUST FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE.
I can't even. I don't want to start sobbing at my desk. I had a terrible headache last night after all the crying I did.
This is why I need the Captain America crossover where Julie survives and becomes a supersoldier and has many spyventures with Maddie and Peggy Carter after the war.
ANYWAY. I'm not sure any of that actually makes sense? But I highly recommend this book.
Lastly, while I was getting dressed this morning - in dim light because it takes forever for those spirally bulbs to get to full brightness - it turns out that the black pants and the black suit jacket I threw on are not, in fact from the same suit and the blacks don't match. Oops? I don't think anyone else has noticed.
You know I choose my subject lines from whatever song is playing when I finish writing the post right? I am amused at how this one turned out. iPod oracle indeed.
*
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/468254.html.
people have commented there.