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Code Name Verity
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Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein - VBC June 2016
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Precisely! Which is why Sabrina pointed out that mentioning it was a bit of a spoiler. Apologies.
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Being orphaned (or lost or having the parent disappear or in some way be out of the story) is a classic trope in children's literature because it opens the field for the kids to be in control of the story, particularly in adventure stories. How do you show a kid stepping up to a challenge and being bold if her mom is at her elbow the whole way? Dead parent = insecure/changing future = catalyst for maturation.
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Being orphaned (or lost or having the parent disappear or in some way be out of t..."
True, Erin, but I still remember being carried out of the theater screaming when Bambi's mother died!
Merrily wrote: "Erin wrote: "Kathy wrote: "Have you all noticed that there seems to be a dead parent in many of these movies, not just Disney."Being orphaned (or lost or having the parent disappear or in some wa..."
There's a fine line between being liberated and being traumatized. As a kid I think I was content to have my parents around! I always thought those movies had death in them because we have to reconcile ourselves with mortality. There is no art without death.
Merrily wrote: "KarenB wrote: "Cathy asked: But isn't there some issue of degree? Isn't there some quantum of unreliability before the narrator qualifies?Yes, but it's the difference between an individual perspe..."
Gone Girl is a book I haven't read because everyone tells me I should. Guess I'll have to read it.
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So true. Or when Mufasa gets trampled by wildebeests. But I only said it was common, not that it wasn't emotional ;-)
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Yes, but it's the difference between an i..."
Cathy, I liked "Gone Girl," but as with all books, some don't. But, it is very clever and I certainly didn't guess what was going on!
My daughter, the high school English teacher, says she still hopes to respond to the discussion about depressing books assigned in English classes. However, she's preparing her students for finals and Regents' Exams (her school being in New York), and she has jury duty next week, so no one can promise that she'll get to this. However, from talking to her, I have a couple of observations I'd like to throw in.She has taught several of these allegedly traumatic books. I am pretty sure that neither she nor those who design the curriculum are assigning these book because -- as an English teacher quoted upthread said -- "the students needed to read books about dysfunctional families so that the teens read about families that are as mixed up as their own." As far as I can determine, the books are chosen because they have literary merit and (hopefully) have themes and characters with which teens can identify. Maybe my daughter's students are tougher than those in other districts -- she teaches in an inner-city high school, where many of the kids come from poverty and/or broken families, and some are refugees from troubled countries -- but I actually sort of doubt that, since a lot of the teen drama she reports reminds me of my own high school years. But she is pretty close to her students, and does not think any of them have been traumatized or depressed by their assignments.
As it happens, she is currently doing The Things They Carried with her senior AP class. The characters are about the same age as her students, and they go through things that real American teenagers went through during the Vietnam War and are going through right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. I asked her if she thought any of her students were upset by the book. She said no, but they had questions about how realistic it was, how certain things worked, etc., that she could not answer. She is fortunate to have a close friend, an Army captain, who did two or three tours in Iraq, commanding troops about their age, and who had some similar experiences -- and who has read the book -- so she invited him in to talk to the students yesterday. She said her students were very engaged and serious, but not unduly shaken either by the book or by his discussion (some of which involved IEDs, so was somewhat grim).
In addition to The Things They Carried, she has taught To Kill a Mockingbird and a few other books that deal with difficult subjects: Elie Wiesel's Night, Push (the book from which the movie Precious was made), and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Each of these was chosen for literary merit, historical tie-ins with other classes, and/or themes to which the kids would relate. I think she would know if her students found them too emotionally difficult, because they talk to her about their lives to an amazing degree, and she had no such impression. She did find the kids curiously unengaged with Mockingbird, and engaged with Night to a surprising degree -- they wrote to Elie Wiesel. So while I can appreciate that some sensitive teens might have problems with some books, I think that's an unusual reaction and cannot be the basis of deciding what books to teach -- although a good teacher will find ways to let kids who are upset know that they can come to him/her and talk about it.
Finally, the fact that kids might not get as much out of a book like Mockingbird when they are in school as they would/will when they are older does not seem to me like a good reason not to teach it. The whole reason why adults re-read good books (including the Bible!) is because they get more and different things out of the books on re-reading. (My re-reading of Lord of the Rings, 30 years after my first reading, gave me some entirely different perspectives on the themes of war, kingship, courage, and mortality than did the first reading.) But only if they are taught HOW to read a good book will kids be able to get more out of the same books -- and other ones -- later.
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So true, Kathy! I'm the same way. I cry every single time I watch the first ten minutes of UP, and Frozen, and don't even get me started on Dumbo. I cannot take mother torn from child scenarios. Although I did read 'With Child', but only because I trusted Laurie to leave it on a good note. Some authors, I do not trust at all, and will avoid their books at all costs.
Like Erin said, I think it'd be harder for a young person to be independent with a supportive family. So the whole dead family trope is used a lot. Although having said that... Stand By Me did a good job of that. And I just realized that in my own fantasy book, I have the 16 year old protagonist traveling with her father for the whole series.
I'm trying to think of other books/movies that have parents play a large role, but I'm drawing a blank. Oh! To Kill a Mockingbird.
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I distinctly remember watching Schindler's List in high school and thinking it was a very good movie and gosh those poor people, but I didn't cry.
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I think you're right, Erin. I feel more empathetic and sensitive to bad situations, or it touches on a personal experience of my own that brings up all those emotions that I've tried to squash down.
I wasn't that affected by Schindler's List either, but that was because I watched a documentary with actual survivors who where telling their story. I thought Schindler's List was tame compared to the stories of torture and personal experiences that survivors related.
Just wanted to jump in and say that this novel- and the sequel- were among some of the better YA offerings recently. I will chat more after the 11th spoiler cut-off date!
Why do we wait so long to discuss a book?
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You mean why do we wait so long to discuss spoilers, Cathy? Most online bookclubs avoid spoilers for a specific amount of time and just give general comments of 'I loved this book' or 'I hated this' while discussing themes and such. It's a courtesy for those who might still be reading the book. One bookclub I follow will have a book thread with no spoilers for half a month, and then make a new book thread with spoilers for the second half.
Sabrina wrote: "Cathy wrote: "Why do we wait so long to discuss a book?"You mean why do we wait so long to discuss spoilers, Cathy? Most online bookclubs avoid spoilers for a specific amount of time and just giv..."
Not discussing "spoilers" means you really can't talk in any depth about the book. We certainly haven't talked about the current book. If that's the convention so be it but it seems to waste the month. I got an email in the latter part of May reminding me what the June book was. I downloaded it and read it and now I am starting to forget the details. I'd reread it but it was disturbing and I am reluctant to read it again.
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That's awesome you are such a fast reader, Cathy! Everyone reads at a different pace, so I think it's very courteous of our moderators to give everyone in the bookclub a chance to read the book and voice their first impressions without spoilers. You won't have to wait long to talk about spoilers. We will start that on the 11th, and that gives us a whole 20 days of discussion.
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I will add that I know people have different attitudes to spoilers, but I'm one of those people who (were I to be reading the book right now) had it "spoiled" by an online discussion, it would ruin the book for me. I really like suspense!
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Erin wrote: "Rolling it back to the current book, all the violence here was fairly implicit (for the most part), but it still struck me as very mature material. Torture at the hands of the Nazis?! But so much o..."Erin, my take on the book was very similar. I thought that this was very direct about unpleasant material, but I thought the tone and level of formality or difficulty read very much as a YA book. That, for me, matters just as much as the protagonist's age in deciding whether or not a book is a YA book.
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So I don't know about the rest of you, but I was on pins and needles when Verity was writing... "I have told the truth. I have told the truth" over and over. And then UGH, that last bit about being sent to the experimentation camp was horrible.
I researched those 'medical' experiments camps for something I was writing. So mind-boggling evil.
I was so surprised when the POV switched to Maddie. And I have to admit that by the time Verity was shot, I was just relieved instead of sad.
Laura wrote: "Merrily wrote: "Laura wrote: ""MaryL said: My son ( an athlete, Eagle Scout and in AP English-not to brag but to say well rounded) was assigned Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon in the 11th grade. He..."I agree with Laura that if a book upsets me I can put it down. I tried but I can't read Code Name Verity. I'll join you again in July.
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So I don't know about the rest of you, but I was on pins and needles when Verity was writing... "I have told the truth. I have told the truth" over and over. And then UGH, that las..."
Totally agree, Sabrina. So much foreboding! I absolutely tore through the first half of the book needing to find out what happens to Verity...and then was so frustrated with the narrative switch to Maddie.
But I was shocked when Verity died. I think it went against the "we don't kill main characters" policy that seems to be standard in most non-literary fiction. And I absolutely saw Verity as the main character. Until I was reading notes from the author (who said that this was Maddie's story from her perspective). On rereading, I can sort of see what she means, but I still see this as being Verity's tragedy.
Erin wrote: "But I was shocked when Verity died...On rereading, I can sort of see what she means, but I still see this as being Verity's tragedy."I would not deny the tragic qualities of Verity's death (from, er, Verity's perspective, if that's not a contradiction in terms), but I think that by the end of the book, we are being asked to view her pretty definitively as someone who still sees value or even triumph in accomplishing her original mission, whatever the cost. (Or is that just how Maddie desperately needs to see things?) Whether or not any of us feels that way about it is a separate question, as your comment shows! But I would also say that what has stayed with me most weightily is that Maddie is the one who has to live with the tragedy. It seemed that Wein was really trying to wrap things up in a fairly tidy, even comforting way, but my guess is that even the most favorably disposed family would likely also struggle with the decisions that led to Verity's death, no matter how determined they might be to embrace Maddie and be mindful of her grief and sense of guilt.
Following on from what I just wrote, I also found myself wondering for a long time after finishing the book about who was the more unreliable narrator. It becomes clear while we're still in Verity's section that her narration of events is far from straightforward, but we have no context for trying to evaluate Maddie's narration against anyone else's perspective. For the most part, I decided to take her pretty much at her word, including about the reactions of the SOE man and Julie's family, but I really wondered about this while reading and for a long time afterwards.
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This is something that bugged me a bit too. Mostly because my paperback copy had a preview of the "companion" novel Rose Under Fire in which we learn in the first chapter that Maddie is engaged to Jamie eighteen months after the events in Code Name.
Maddie clearly saved Julie from a torturous future (and most likely death) at Ravensbruck, but I would think it would take most families a bit of times to come to terms with that. Julie's family is definitely special.
And tangenting just a bit to that sequel/companion novel. It's about another of Maddie's friends who does end up imprisoned at Ravensbruck, which I thought was a really interesting full circle for the pair of books. Kind of like a "what if" story, except this new character, Rose, is almost the exact opposite of Verity.
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I have to admit that I wasn't shocked when she was killed. GRR Martin has made killing characters a trope now. And it seems like a lot of authors and readers have jumped on the 'it's not real unless someone dies' bandwagon.
It reminds me of when the whole 'ending with a death scene' was popular in figure skating. Every single figure skater was 'dying' at the end of a performance and the judges actually had to ban it from competition because they got so sick of it.
I just watched the Revenant a few nights ago, and half way through the movie, I was just wishing that everyone in the movie would be put out of their misery. I've had this happen while reading a few books too. Perdido Street Station comes to mind and pretty much every book written by one author I know.
When a storyline is so bleak, I just sort of disconnect from it, and hope the human race is killed off so the animals can go about their business. Code Name Verity wasn't quite so bad, but I was definitely there with Verity.
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I didn't feel the same way about the family accepting events and Maddie into their life. I think the family had had a similar experience already with the aunt and her husband. Also, that journal was powerful... both journals.
Given the circumstances, I felt that Maddie did do the best thing, and it was a testament to their friendship that she would take that burden to live with for her friend. Otherwise, Verity would have ended up going to a German experimentation camp, and the things the SS did there was straight out of the worse horror movies.
The main issue I had with the book was the standoff between 15 resistance fighters and 3 German soldiers. That made absolutely no sense to me, and I felt like it was contrived. No matter how I look at it, I just can't imagine the 3 German soldiers being in a position where the resistance fighters wouldn't have a clear shot.
Sabrina wrote: "Gleodream and Erin, I didn't feel the same way about the family accepting events and Maddie into their life. I think the family had had a similar experience already with the aunt and her husband. ..."Oh, I'm definitely not suggesting that the family couldn't accept Maddie and what had happened! All I mean is that the book was (throughout) glossing over a lot of emotional complexity. And my comments about Maddie as possibly unreliable aren't necessarily to suggest that she was flat-out lying.
A lot of things in the book were contrived, that's for sure! But on the other hand, I think I could imagine this stand-off scenario maybe being possible, depending on the particular people and their training. Certainly, if it were Holmes and Russell who were outnumbered, we'd swallow it!
Regarding spoilers - I just finished the book, and then came here and read the entire discussion so far because I wanted to avoid any spoilers. I've only been a member of the group for a few months, and really didn't know how that works, so I was actually glad to see that you start the discussion a little generally and clearly note when the spoilers start. Thank you!Talking about the concept of YA and "adult" books in general, I remember a story from when I was in elementary school. I started reading young, and always read above grade level. My parents and teachers encouraged this. There was a particular book series that was popular when I was younger, and there was a "sister" series that was aimed towards a younger audience (the original being aimed to preteen to early teens and the younger being aimed to around eight years old). I was reading one of the books in the main series and I had a classmate (this was either first or second grade) come up to me and tell me I wasn't "allowed" to read those books, I had to read the younger series instead. I was completely baffled. It was really the only time I was told I wasn't old enough to read something.
Gleodream wrote: "Following on from what I just wrote, I also found myself wondering for a long time after finishing the book about who was the more unreliable narrator. It becomes clear while we're still in Verity'..."Now that it's open season for spoilers (I agree with the policy, but when I'm finished reading it leaves me champing at the bit), I want to talk about the unreliable narrator. This is not a plot device, this is in a sense the theme of the whole book: Who are you, really?
Julie is this charming young noblewoman from Scotland. But when she talks down the German pilot who has gone astray over England, she is someone else entirely -- a German military air traffic controller. And then she's Eva Seiler. And then she is the Katharina Habicht -- but she doesn't inhabit that identity thoroughly enough, so she looks the wrong way while crossing the street and is caught. And then, as a prisoner, she's a collaborator, spilling all her secrets in exchange for her clothing and a few more weeks of life. And then, at the end of the book, we realize that all the secrets she spilled are rubbish, and she was actually the old Julie again, spreading disinformation as her last act before being shipped off to Nacht und Nebel. And she inhabits each of these roles so thoroughly that she really IS that person. "Verity" means "truth" -- but which truth?
And it turns out that Georgia Penn is two people. She's the Nazi-sympathizer journalist, except that she's an informant for the Resistance. And Fraulein Engel, is not the abusive guard protrayed in Julie's writings, but a disgusted anti-Nazi who for whatever reason can't quit her job, so she sabotages it instead, giving Julie cigarettes and passing her information on to the Resistance.
Even Maddie, who sees herself as a pilot only, becomes part of the Resistance and is the recruiter for Fraulein Engel and participates in the devastating raid on the prison bus.
So, although this poses as a war novel, I think it is really about identity, and inhabiting multiple identities. (Oh, dear, we're back to Clara Hudson and her "Acts.")
But that's the essence of ALL successful spys: being someone else. It goes back in novels as far as "The 39 Steps" (when the narrator quotes his old South African hunter friend something to the effect that you have to BELIEVE you are the rock and then the antelope believe you are too. So he knows the Germans are only acting as perfect English gentlemen on holiday). Verity IS all those women. And in the end she almost loses Julie. Almost.
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I agree, Gleodream. That seems to be a trait of YA. I felt the same way when I read Hunger Games. Although, I thought this book did manage to convey the weight of the subject matter.
As far as the standoff, maybe I misread it wrong. But from what I understood, the French resistance fighters killed off most of the guards, leaving three German soldiers. Those soldiers had the prisoners on the ground, and were standing in front of a bus with automatic rifles pointed at prisoners. I do not see how the German soldiers could have been undercover standing in front of a bus. Since the Resistance fighters were excellent shots, it seems like they could have easily all shot the three remaining soldiers together.
Standing there for an hour while a whole squad was mobilized was just stupidity.
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Wonderful observations, Lenore. Concise as always. I thought the way this book was put together was amazing. Verity was an unreliable narrator, but only because of the situation. There was a purpose to her deception. And a very convincing one! Someone had mentioned earlier that they couldn't imagine the SS officer putting up with this sort of confession, but I got the feeling, given his interest in literature, that von Linden was enjoying her storytelling. Kind of reminds me of One Thousand and One Nights, where the storyteller is keeping herself alive by spinning a tale so the king won't execute her.
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Thinking about it a bit more, it maybe comes down to what you're willing to sacrifice, and I guess the Resistance was not willing to lose more hostages after the Germans had already killed half a dozen.
This is the part that I struggle with in that scene, because I would think that a hardened Resistance fighter like Paul would know where to cut his losses. The Germans may have shot a few more prisoners before the Resistance was able to take out the three remaining guards, but that would have been better than leaving all fourteen of the prisoners to be maimed on the ground or taken to camps and subjected to who knows what.
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Absolutely. He does start calling her Shahrazad in there somewhere, as I recall.
Thinking more about the question of "Who are you, really?" and von Linden's willingness to be entertained by the literary nature of Verity's writings. I think perhaps that reading the writings, and then being ordered by his superior to send Verity off, brought home to von Linden that he didn't much like who he was, really. Otherwise, suicide seems like an excessive response to a Resistance attack on his headquarters.
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That's what I didn't get, Erin. These were hardened resistance fighters. Surely they knew what would happen to the prisoners. I doubt they bought the propaganda that prisoners were well cared for. And as you said, if it really was a standoff, why wait around for reinforcements? Better to take chances with the three guards.
I remember coming across a story during my research of two resistance fighters who put a red cloth over a flashlight and stood beside the train tracks at night. The train engineer thought it was a train switch and it said 'stop', so he stopped the train. As soon as he did that, Resistance fighters ran up and started opening the doors. The train was full of Jews headed to a concentration camp. Many prisoners died, but a good many escaped.
Clearly, Resistance fighters knew what was at stake and were willing to make an attempt to rescue as many as possible.
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I think Verity really got under von Linden's skin with the final comment about his daughter. And did anyone else suspect that von Linden knew it was Maddie talking to Engel on the bridge towards the end? I thought he was too sharp to have fallen for Maddie's act. I think he knew something was going on, and let it go.
Regardless, a lot of German SS officers (and Hitler) committed suicide. I highly recommend the movie Downfall. Unfortunately, I haven't read the book it was based on, which was Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary.
Lenore wrote: "So, although this poses as a war novel, I think it is really about identity, and inhabiting multiple identities. ."I've been thinking about this question a lot, especially after reading the sequel. I don't know if others who've read both feel the same way, but I found that in some ways, Rose Under Fire was more plausible or at any rate, easier to simply read without wondering about the narration itself. I don't know if it's even about the reliability of the narrator, as such, or the plausibility of the plot, but I think I would agree that Verity seems to be most fundamentally about identity and truth, and whether or not those ideas are negotiable or voluntary.
Gleodream wrote: "and whether or not those ideas are negotiable or voluntary."I guess what I mean is not whether or not you can opt in, so to speak, but "voluntary" in the sense that you can choose which identity or which truth to live in.
Gleodream wrote: "Gleodream wrote: "and whether or not those ideas are negotiable or voluntary."I guess what I mean is not whether or not you can opt in, so to speak, but "voluntary" in the sense that you can choo..."
But I would add that sometimes which identity you inhabit is not so voluntary. Maddie never intended to be undercover, although she did it very well.
Lenore wrote: "But I would add that sometimes which identity you inhabit is not so voluntary. Maddie never intended to be undercover, although she did it very well"Certainly.
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I think this is kind of particular to certain people: those best suited to the Game. I wonder why that is, though. Why is it that Julie can so readily slide into a different identity and truly become that identity? Julie is great at pretending to be a thing and really believing her own story. Maddie, on the other hand, is not an identity until she is actually living it. Julie is able to compartmentalize herself in a way that Maddie cannot. And I definitely identify more with Maddie on that.
I don't know that I'd say truth and identity are really the same here, though. We don't know what's true about Julie because we don't know the whole story until much later. It doesn't really change who she is (a very skilled intelligence agent) at her core. More like truth is a matter of perspective. Like one of those collage images made up of hundreds of tiny little pictures.
This is probably the point where it's most clear that the real "main character" is Maddie, just because we don't really get any insight into Julie's thinking.
I'm listening to another WWII novel, A Hero of France. The main character, Mathieu, is head of a Resistance unit specializing in exfiltrating downed RAF pilots back to England. Part of the plot involves a Lysander, set to pick up a special pilot, which crashes on landing. Thanks to Code Name Verity, I had a really clear idea of exactly what was required to prepare the landing site and the difficulties faced by the Lysander pilots. Another example of the well-known phenomenon that, once you learn something new, you see it all around you.
Erin wrote: "Gleodream wrote: "I don't know that I'd say truth and identity are really the same here, though."I didn't mean the "and" to equate them so much as to suggest that there's a similarity in that they both seem to be slippery concepts in this book. I think you're right that there's a particularly important distinction between them in Julie's portion of the story, but what I was thinking about was the fact that people do seem to be able or to hope to be able to construct *a* truth that will be accepted by or even enshrined for others. All of them who are involved in the Game do this in various ways, but it's not always precisely the same as the identities that they must wear.
I give this five stars. I think it is the most remarkable World War II book recently. But, in my opinion, it broke every rule of a YA book. The two protagonists are each 23 years old. And although the violence isn't graphic, it is definitely there. And I am not sure the ending is what a YA book would normally lead one to expect. I did not find the book depressing. Shocking, maybe. And, of course, sad. And several recent YA books have had the same kind of sadness.
It is my opinion that YA is now gathering books that don't fit anywhere else and since most World War II novels are military novels aimed at men, this really wouldn't fit there. But I do love this book. Just got the British version because I find it difficult to read English characters speaking words that are spelled for (and punctuated for) Americans even though I am American.
By the way, I loved the NY Times reviewer calling it a "fiendishly plotted mind game of a novel".
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I've been perusing Elizabeth Wein's blog and she actually is a pilot! So I imagine she took special care to add in all the interesting plane related details she found about the war.
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Laurie R. King Virtual Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
A Hero of France (other topics)Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary (other topics)
Perdido Street Station (other topics)
Rose Under Fire (other topics)
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (other topics)
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Yes, but it's the difference between an individual perspective that is s..."
Cathy, yes, what Karen said. I think the concept of the Unreliable Narrator has become especially popular since "Gone Girl," although it's been around for a long time (consider "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," by Agatha Christie). And there is a great range, from the narrator who's deliberately misleading to someone who is giving you incorrect information because s/he is misinformed or blind to the reality of a situation thanks to a distorted viewpoint (the nameless narrator in "Rebecca"). I think the difference between the Unreliable Narrator and the "everyone has his/her own viewpoint" thought is that in most books, the reader is asked to identify with the storyteller and accept his or her view as truth, and nothing happens to upset that bond (think "Jane Eyre") or virtually every mystery series told in the first person. But with the Unreliable Narrator, that bond IS broken at some point, and the reader is gobsmacked (yes, Kathy, "I Let You Go" is a great example). It doesn't necessarily mean that we lose sympathy for the narrator, either, just that we suddenly realize that we have been tricked!