Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon

Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon was our book club book for this month. I chose it based on Stephany's recommendation.

In this book, we follow Nancy Wake through multiple timelines as she fights and spies during World War II for the French Resistance. She smuggles people to safety, she leads men through acts of espionage, and she does it all while keeping her red lipstick fresh and her dignity intact. 

Book club take: This book is good. Nancy Wake is an interesting character and we would probably have preferred the author's note about her being a real person have come at the beginning of the book, rather than the end. We didn't have much discussion about this book, really, because we all sort of agreed it was...fine.

(Truthfully, we spent probably twenty minutes trying to figure out what other WWII book we read had scenes of people escaping through the Pyrenees Mountains. We thought maybe it was The Nightingale, but came to the conclusion that we don't really remember much about that book. Then we spent another twenty minutes going over all the other WWII books we'd read and decided that we probably shouldn't read another one for a good long while. 

There was a person who has been a member of our book club group on Facebook for several years, but came in person for the first time and she asked us about Raft of Stars. She had read it and recommended it to someone as a "lighter read" and the very first thing I said about it was "there was too much child abuse and I freaked out about it" and then we talked about which books we've read for book club could be counted as a "lighter read" and now you sort of understand how we didn't really talk about this book much.)

My take: Basically, the same. It's a fine book. It's well-written and well researched and I like the idea of the woman off fighting in the war while the husband stayed at home with the dog. I liked the dog. 

But there's no tension here. We know from a very early scene that Nancy makes it through the war. I guess if you care about the other characters, maybe you're curious how all that turns out, but I for one, didn't really care about them. The multiple timelines were a bit confusing and I wish I had done a better job of taking notes about what was going on in each timeline. I imagine a reread would be incredibly useful. I also sort of wish I'd just read Wake's own autobiography, rather than a fictionalized account.

It's fine. If you like WWII fiction, this will scratch that itch.

3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

The friendships of women are strange and wonderful. Fraught and irreplaceable. (page 153)

I love reading about female friendship. (I KNOW you are all sick of hearing about this from me.)

Honestly, I'm so tired of this bullshit. I can't have a byline because I'm a woman. I can't apply for marriage license on my own because I'm a woman. I can't drive an ambulance because I'm a woman. (page 206) 

Nancy's frustrations with her life pre-war really come out post-war. I enjoyed her as a character. 

Everyone is looking at me, gauging my response. I was never violent before the war - had never harmed so much as a spider. Something has shifted in me, however. It is deep and primal and fearful. I am no longer afraid to use my own hands to render justice. I am no longer afraid. My capacity for hate has also grown. I am no longer a nice person. But I do not lose sleep over it. So my decision is simple. (page 347)

It's so fascinating to hear about war from this perspective and how people knew that it changed them while it was happening.