Code Name Verity

Overall an excellent read.
I preferred the character of Maddie, and wished the whole book could have been in 3rd person narrative form, rather than in the occasionally coy-seeming voice of the other girl who's ostensibly writing the story of Maddie. That and the unreliable narrator conceit, seemed coy and annoying and uneccessary. Possibly it might go over better with young adults, though the reading list--Kim, Swallows and Amazons, Peter Pan--may only appeal to adults, especially if they're anglophiles.
But it's a good story--can't wait for the movie, where you don't have to deal with the above authorial-voice problems!--especially as an insight into the women pilots of WW2, in the ATA, whose story is compelling.
The cover (at least in the US edition), however, is dreadful: apart from being indecipherable, it's absurd, ugly and gives a terrible impression of the book. ( )

The fall of 1943, Nazi-occupied France. An British plane crashes and a young female spy is captured. She has been named Verity. As she is being interrogated, she begins to tell a story, about her best friend Maddie, the pilot of the plane that wrecked. How two people from very different backgrounds met and an unbreakable bond formed. Verity also begins to divulge classified information, to keep herself alive and to learn Maddie’s fate, but is she telling the truth or weaving a complex and dangerous web of lies?
This is a beautifully written, deftly plotted story about survival and friendship. The author captures the period vividly and I learned many details about the war that I never knew before, including the presence of female spies and female pilots in the RAF. Highly recommended.

“But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb.” ( )

This book reads like a (tragic) love story to friendship. The author has carefully interwoven a great deal of history about what it was like to be a woman and a pilot during the war; she seems to only bend realism for plot in that there were relatively few female spies, but there were some, and female pilots were not unheard of. I listened to this book on audiobook and would recommend doing so, because the Scottish and British accents add to the WW2 ambiance. (The male speaker who introduced each bit had a voice that grated on me, however; he can go.)

A Scottish spy being held by the Nazis writes her account of how she met her best friend Maddie, a pilot, and how they flew and crashed into Nazi-occupied France. She tells this tale under torture, often describing what is happening to her. This is the first half of the book. The second half is the writings of Maddie herself in her pilot's notebook, describing being in hiding and desperately searching for Julie. Nothing is wasted in this book: the girls' discussions of their deepest fears, the things they carry with them, the people they meet often come up again, and this is a book where you have to pay attention.

My primary criticism of this book is that in some ways I think it would have worked much better with large but alternating chunks of narrative switching back and forth between the two girls, especially since Julie swears over and over again that she has told the truth to the Nazis, and Maddie reveals what really is true and what is not. ( )

A really good historical fiction read for young adults. Tells some of the history of British women's contributions to World War II through their service in the air. Quite well done. ( )

This is an amazing book, but one that is difficult to describe without ruining the experience of reading it. It takes place during the Second World War, and starts as the confession of a young Scottish woman who was caught as a spy in German-occupied France. She has been tortured at the hands of the Germans, and is now telling all she knows of the British war effort. But mixed up in this is the story of her friendship with a female pilot.

Code Name Verity is classified as a young adult book, and is the type of book that I wish was around when I was a teenager. However it's a young adult book that can and should be read by adults too. It's a book about friendship, and the style of heroism that is being scared yet carrying on to do what needs to be done. The characterisation of the two young women is wonderful, but even the smallest parts are well-drawn, and don't seem like cardboard characters.

I really loved this book, although it is at times a hard book to read, featuring torture, and imprisonment and the constant fear of bombs and war in general. I would definitely recommend it. (I would not really recommend reading it while on a bus though.)

Why I picked it up: I've read an Elizabeth Wein before, I was intrigued by the setting and it was getting a lot of good reviews. ( )