Campbell Andrews’s Reviews > The Nightingale > Status Update

Sweet Lord I don't think I can do it. Gaffes abound but most of all it's such a BORING book, like watching TV when you know it's about to break for commercial

"Like a thousand-legged centipede"

aka a milipede

Attack of the Living Dead- these aren't refugees, they're zombies

"You'd be surprised at the things I know, Gaetan. There is more than one kind of prison."

There are eye-rollers on every. single. page. At this rate I will never finish, so I will try and limit my comments to things that make me laugh out loud and/or shake with anger.

I may not finish it anyway.

"wiry as an apostrophe mark"

Here we go again. "an apostrophe *mark*"? Why not just "an apostrophe?"

how "wiry" is an apostrophe, anyway? Last I checked it was a single stroke.

Or did she mean wiry as a _question_ mark?? "question" must more certainly be accompanied by "mark", and that bit of punctuation, with its curve, is much more "wiry" than an apostrophe.

This book was hardly edited, if at all.

"The automobile made its slow, agonizing way..." and then 2 paragraphs later: "The car lurched forward and stopped hard. Isabelle hit the seat in front of her."

Physics, anyone?

Are there French novels about prewar U.S. that traffic in as much cliche and fetishism?

Yep. I just finished a novel in which the characters were not native French speakers, and "Mon Dieu" was an occasional exclamation that served to emphasize their amazement *and* cosmopolitan bonafides.

But in this one? The characters _are_ French, so English punctuated by "Mon Dieu" (3 times by 2 characters in this chapter alone) can only be to lend authenticity to their portrayal. Lazy.

"A girl. A hero? Absurd."

I fear this is a Hallmark novel, historical fiction for people who imagine if they lived then they would do the right thing.

2nd chapter and we've already moved from 1st to 3rd person: danger!