Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Book Review: Code Name Verity

Code Name Verity.
By Elizabeth Wein.
2012, 337p.  Hyperion, $16.99 (978-1-4231-5219-4).
Gr. 9-12
Highly Recommended
            Under pain of torture and threat of brutal execution, Verity, a Scottish-British spy, artfully confesses to her Gestapo captors her involvement in the Resistance.  Her confession is penned on scraps of paper—everything from prescription pads to sheet music--belonging to former inhabitants of a country hotel in fictional Ormaie, France.  Through a physically, mentally, and emotionally excruciating written confession, we meet her best friend and civilian air corps pilot, Maddie, who flew her on her last mission.  Although the novel begins in medias res, Verity, in a defiant, sarcastic, and, at times, beaten tone begins with her best friend’s story up until the point she jumps from Maddie’s wounded plane in occupied France.  It is here that Maddie continues the narrative through her pilot’s notes in her simple, honest voice.  Maddie and Verity’s friendship is not one based on boys, clothes, or summer camp; instead, Wein crafts a narrative told in two voices that paints a portrait of genuine friendship in wartime.  A cast of secondary characters on both sides of the war provides depth and contrast to the two friends’ lives.  As historical fiction, some may be bothered by the inventive history and anachronisms, but the author seeks to justify her creative and research processes in the endnotes.  The narrators’ voices are in all essence la verite, truthful.  In the beginning a reader might feel bogged-down by the Scottish brag of Verity’s voice and minute details; however, once immersed in the relationship between the two young women, they will want to prolong the finale and their farewell to these friends. –Audrey Wilson-Youngblood


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