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A review by laurenmichellebrock
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
5.0
This book became so much more than I expected from it. There is a quote in Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle where protagonist Cassandra Mortmain describes reading as creating along with the author. “When I read a book,” she says, “I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it–or rather, it is like living it.” I have always had this experience when reading books, but I felt it most acutely reading this one. I will tell you why in a bit. Firstly, this is a story of two girls during WWII–one a wireless operator and eventual pilot, the other an interrogator–who become best friends after ushering a foreign enemy plane onto British territory.
When you first begin to read, you are introduced to a Scottish captive, half naked, tortured, and writing on spare pieces of paper everything she knows about her operation. We learn this narrator to be Queenie, the interrogator, taken into custody by the Ormaie Gestapo after looking the wrong way crossing the road when trying to meet her next contact after having to abandon a dysfunctional plane. She is held in the Chateau de Bordeaux, previously an elegant hotel deemed an unfortunate nickname, Chateau des Bourreaux, or Castle of Butchers. “I am a coward,” are her first words to us, “I wanted to be heroic and I pretended I was. I have always been good at pretending.”
I didn’t realize just how telling the first line of this book was until I reached the very end and reflected on the landscape of the novel. I feel bad even telling you what I’ve already told you, because the unwrapping of each detail is executed so jarringly, and I hate to rob you of that experience because Wein manages it so well. There are things you don’t understand what you’re reading–the underlined sentences, the secret codes, the pages upon pages of Queenie’s story–for the longest time. You are asked to pick up clue after clue and tuck it into your pocket until the appropriate time, which unloads on you in such a way that you struggle to digest all the information, but in the good way, like eating potatoes too quickly and getting them painfully lodged in your throat as they dig against the tender flesh of your esophagus as you try to swallow it all down.
What I liked most about this book, what I came to appreciate so avidly in it from the moment I began reading, was the way Wein suggest certain images to you in her writing. Queenie, as you come to learn, is no coward as she claims to be in the beginning. The grimness of her situation is revealed almost immediately and only becomes more grim as the story progresses. The suggestion that at one point she was so severely starved and tortured that she made a show of standing up in front of her captor, von Linden, because it had been the first time she’d been able to stand in weeks, produced a ghastly image of a thin, gnarled body in my mind as I read. That was one of the scenes I felt I was creating along with the author, because even though it was mentioned briefly in Queenie’s stream-of-conscious writing, my brain isolated the image as though I were watching a scene from a movie–Queenie struggling, perhaps crooked over to the side on thin legs with her wrists bound behind her back, but still with a smirk of defiance, because Queenie is nothing if not defiant.
Another scene I remember coming alive so vividly in my mind was when Queenie begged the captive French girl to lie to von Linden as Queenie listened to her being tortured. Because of her raucous, von Linden dragged Queenie into the interrogation room to tell the French girl what she was saying to her face, and when Queenie belted a few unsavory words that von Linden did not appreciate, he ordered for her mouth to be washed with carbolic acid. But Queenie was not to be punished so easily. Anticipating that a rather intense exchange was about to come between her and von Linden, I imagined a deathly quietness sinking into the room as she yelled.
“Look at me!” I screeched. “Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minting Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!”
He stopped them.
He couldn’t do it.
I choked with relief, gasping.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “After she’s eaten. Fraulein Engel knows how to prepare the phenol.”
“Coward! Coward!” I sobbed in hysterical fury. “Do it now! Do it yourself!”
“Get her out of here.”
That was one of my favorite scenes of the book. I could just see the mental camera of my mind cutting back and forth between Queenie, von Linden, the French girl, and Fraulein Engel–Queenie crumbling into madness as the other three watched: the French girl, perhaps stubborn with rage; Engel, stoic, but with a glint of sadness in her eyes; and von Linden, quietly seething, both fused with hatred and pity as Queenie forces him to see the parallels between herself and his daughter, both young, the one tucked away innocently from the war and the other ruined by it. And as Queenie calls von Linden out on his cowardice, a somber, elongated stroke of violins sound as Queenie is pulled, resistant and yelling, out of the chamber.
This has been one of the most powerful books I’ve read in a long time where I felt like the author was allowing me the space, as a reader, to create my own visual. It was different when I read Harry Potter, because I had the misfortune of seeing the movies first, so I have to work extra hard to recreate the descriptions from the fabric of my own imagination when I re-read them now. I don’t want to see it like I’m watching the movies all over again in my mind; I want to be able to create the scenes in my head with my own interpretation. It’s possible that I was just focusing more while reading Verity, and so my imagination was more attuned to what was on the page, but I also believe it is because Wein is just that skilled of a writer.
In the spirit of creating with the author, I also had very specific casting in mind for some of the main characters. I imagined Dianna Agron as Queenie, because she has a refined look that I think would work perfectly with Queenie’s posture and, based on her latest role in The Family, diamond-in-the-rough personality. For Maddie, I imagined Emma Watson, because of her sometimes harried disposition as Hermione and her amazing talent of crying on cue. For Jamie, Queenie’s brother, I saw William Moseley of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fame. I could never settle on von Linden, except to say that I imagined a tall, older man with a stiffly set jaw, and Engel came to me in the form of a younger Shalom Harlow. Kayla countered that she would like to see lesser known actors in the film, and while I would be okay with that as well, I will probably always read this book with these actors in mind, because their representations came to me so naturally and quickly.
There is definitely a special place in my heart for all the books I could easily co-create with the author in my mind as I read, because it made the experience that much more intense and memorable. It is an art form to provide just the right information and paint just the right image for readers to get the scenes to come alive so vividly for them in their minds. This is why I believe that reading the book is even more special and more important that seeing the film, because it really is your own creation when you read a book. Everything is left to your devices and imagination in order to make that experience the brightest it can be, and it is a feeling unlike anything I’ve ever experienced when the author’s creation and your creation become a seamless interaction.
When you first begin to read, you are introduced to a Scottish captive, half naked, tortured, and writing on spare pieces of paper everything she knows about her operation. We learn this narrator to be Queenie, the interrogator, taken into custody by the Ormaie Gestapo after looking the wrong way crossing the road when trying to meet her next contact after having to abandon a dysfunctional plane. She is held in the Chateau de Bordeaux, previously an elegant hotel deemed an unfortunate nickname, Chateau des Bourreaux, or Castle of Butchers. “I am a coward,” are her first words to us, “I wanted to be heroic and I pretended I was. I have always been good at pretending.”
I didn’t realize just how telling the first line of this book was until I reached the very end and reflected on the landscape of the novel. I feel bad even telling you what I’ve already told you, because the unwrapping of each detail is executed so jarringly, and I hate to rob you of that experience because Wein manages it so well. There are things you don’t understand what you’re reading–the underlined sentences, the secret codes, the pages upon pages of Queenie’s story–for the longest time. You are asked to pick up clue after clue and tuck it into your pocket until the appropriate time, which unloads on you in such a way that you struggle to digest all the information, but in the good way, like eating potatoes too quickly and getting them painfully lodged in your throat as they dig against the tender flesh of your esophagus as you try to swallow it all down.
What I liked most about this book, what I came to appreciate so avidly in it from the moment I began reading, was the way Wein suggest certain images to you in her writing. Queenie, as you come to learn, is no coward as she claims to be in the beginning. The grimness of her situation is revealed almost immediately and only becomes more grim as the story progresses. The suggestion that at one point she was so severely starved and tortured that she made a show of standing up in front of her captor, von Linden, because it had been the first time she’d been able to stand in weeks, produced a ghastly image of a thin, gnarled body in my mind as I read. That was one of the scenes I felt I was creating along with the author, because even though it was mentioned briefly in Queenie’s stream-of-conscious writing, my brain isolated the image as though I were watching a scene from a movie–Queenie struggling, perhaps crooked over to the side on thin legs with her wrists bound behind her back, but still with a smirk of defiance, because Queenie is nothing if not defiant.
Another scene I remember coming alive so vividly in my mind was when Queenie begged the captive French girl to lie to von Linden as Queenie listened to her being tortured. Because of her raucous, von Linden dragged Queenie into the interrogation room to tell the French girl what she was saying to her face, and when Queenie belted a few unsavory words that von Linden did not appreciate, he ordered for her mouth to be washed with carbolic acid. But Queenie was not to be punished so easily. Anticipating that a rather intense exchange was about to come between her and von Linden, I imagined a deathly quietness sinking into the room as she yelled.
“Look at me!” I screeched. “Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minting Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!”
He stopped them.
He couldn’t do it.
I choked with relief, gasping.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “After she’s eaten. Fraulein Engel knows how to prepare the phenol.”
“Coward! Coward!” I sobbed in hysterical fury. “Do it now! Do it yourself!”
“Get her out of here.”
That was one of my favorite scenes of the book. I could just see the mental camera of my mind cutting back and forth between Queenie, von Linden, the French girl, and Fraulein Engel–Queenie crumbling into madness as the other three watched: the French girl, perhaps stubborn with rage; Engel, stoic, but with a glint of sadness in her eyes; and von Linden, quietly seething, both fused with hatred and pity as Queenie forces him to see the parallels between herself and his daughter, both young, the one tucked away innocently from the war and the other ruined by it. And as Queenie calls von Linden out on his cowardice, a somber, elongated stroke of violins sound as Queenie is pulled, resistant and yelling, out of the chamber.
This has been one of the most powerful books I’ve read in a long time where I felt like the author was allowing me the space, as a reader, to create my own visual. It was different when I read Harry Potter, because I had the misfortune of seeing the movies first, so I have to work extra hard to recreate the descriptions from the fabric of my own imagination when I re-read them now. I don’t want to see it like I’m watching the movies all over again in my mind; I want to be able to create the scenes in my head with my own interpretation. It’s possible that I was just focusing more while reading Verity, and so my imagination was more attuned to what was on the page, but I also believe it is because Wein is just that skilled of a writer.
In the spirit of creating with the author, I also had very specific casting in mind for some of the main characters. I imagined Dianna Agron as Queenie, because she has a refined look that I think would work perfectly with Queenie’s posture and, based on her latest role in The Family, diamond-in-the-rough personality. For Maddie, I imagined Emma Watson, because of her sometimes harried disposition as Hermione and her amazing talent of crying on cue. For Jamie, Queenie’s brother, I saw William Moseley of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fame. I could never settle on von Linden, except to say that I imagined a tall, older man with a stiffly set jaw, and Engel came to me in the form of a younger Shalom Harlow. Kayla countered that she would like to see lesser known actors in the film, and while I would be okay with that as well, I will probably always read this book with these actors in mind, because their representations came to me so naturally and quickly.
There is definitely a special place in my heart for all the books I could easily co-create with the author in my mind as I read, because it made the experience that much more intense and memorable. It is an art form to provide just the right information and paint just the right image for readers to get the scenes to come alive so vividly for them in their minds. This is why I believe that reading the book is even more special and more important that seeing the film, because it really is your own creation when you read a book. Everything is left to your devices and imagination in order to make that experience the brightest it can be, and it is a feeling unlike anything I’ve ever experienced when the author’s creation and your creation become a seamless interaction.