Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Code Name Verity
by Elizabeth Wein

Wow.  I just finished Code Name Verity and I feel on the verge of crying again.  I feel wrung out, like I just lived part of this with them.

I did not cry through most of the book, until I got to the scene where the Frenchwoman treats one girl so kindly, and then again when the author is describing how the children saw a classmate being guillotined to death. It wasn't the fact of it, it was how she brought the reality home in a way that was easy to relate to.

“...what if it had been my old friend Beryl? Or Beryl's sister? Because that's what it's like, schoolmates being guillotined as spies. I didn't understand before – really didn't understand. Being a kid and worrying that a bomb might kill you is terrible. But being a kid and worrying that the police might cut your head off is something else entirely. I haven't words for it. Every fresh broken horror is something that I just didn't understand until I came here.”

Fresh broken horror. Yes, there are horrific things about this book, but they really happened to someone during that war. They are made fresh and immediate in the first person voice and that voice rings true. The first two- thirds of the book is told by one person and the last third is told by another.

It’s hard to know what to say about a book like this.  I don't want to give much away because I don't want to rob anyone of the experience that they would have in reading it, but I must tell you something to let you know how good it was.

It begins with Verity in a Gestapo prison, during World War II, having been caught as a spy.  She has been tortured and has agreed to give them information in exchange for her written confession and knowledge.  She is giving them the sets of wireless codes and you will have no idea what that means until you are three-quarters of the way through the book, but it’s important, so keep reading. 

This is a spy novel, remember that.  People are never who they seem.

Verity is very flippant at times, gallows humor.  “(About the paraffin, kerosene, whatever it is.  I do not really believe you have a liter of kerosene to waste on me.  Or do you get it on the black market?  How do you claim the expense?  1 lt. highly explosive fuel for execution of British spy.  Anyway, I will do my best to spare you the expense.)”

There's so much detail that brings the story to life, even ones that have been smudged. Everything was plausible, and it was clear the author did a great deal of research and that she loved her subject. It was fantastic, truly.

There are things that some reviewers said they just didn’t buy but when they elucidate, I hear them saying that it didn’t fit into their stereotypical view of what a Nazi was or how they acted, such as Von Linden letting Verity write out all this information.  If you accept that people are individuals, who were drawn into the Nazi war machine, then it begins to make much more sense.

The person who performed this book on CD (read just isn't strong enough a word) was exceptional. Even now, as I go back to read a passage or two at the beginning, I can hear Verity’s Scottish accent, light at times and stronger when she’s angry.

As a writer I felt I learned something about the craft in this book. How clearly the voice of the character, not the writer, comes through. That is what to strive for.

I don’t think I can recommend this book strongly enough.  Every book is not for every reader but this one was definitely for me.  I hope it is for you too.