And to respond to Karyn’s idea about the gendered component. I’m a woman, and I didn’t like it that much (and I thought it was very flawed). There was a time when I was really interested in reading about the women of World War II and the roles they were able to take on as men became more and more scarce. I think it’s a really interesting topic that has a lot of potential, but this book didn’t do it for me at all. One issue for me which may have contributed to my reaction is that I didn’t really connect to this friendship. I didn’t become very emotionally invested. I’ve tried to figure out why, and I think there are two things that may have contributed. One is Julie’s weird 3rd person narrative. It felt contrived, it created distance, and it was very distracting to me (as were the plausibility issues). It was much easier to become emotionally invested in Maddie’s section, which felt much more personal and real. And I felt like I never got or understood how these girls became so connected. I remember being told that Julie was discovering her best friend, but I don’t know that I was actually shown enough to really feel it.

And no one has talked about the mercy killing component. I have a hard time believing that everyone just signs off and agrees that “Maddie did the right thing.” Maddie faces no consequences, no opposition, not a single differing viewpoint. And I would think that in the 40s her actions would be far less acceptable. Doing something like that is a big deal, and I was unsatisfied with how little it was explored/dealt with.

I can’t speak to any of the physics of shooting, since I know nothing at all about it – to my really very ignorant sensibility, it seemed entirely possible that Maddie could make the shot(s), so that didn’t muck up the narrative for me. I could have done without the grandmother cropping up, but not much else was out of place for me.

On the subject of writing: I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction about both world wars, and right now I’ve got a book going about nurses in WWII in the Pacific. One of the common threads in a lot of these books, though, is just how very many people – even really unlikely ones, even ones in improbable situations and with very scarce resources – kept some kind of journal or record or diary of their experiences. I remember reading a snippet from some man’s daybook, during the Blitz; he had some sort of very menial job, I can’t recall doing what, and his education had been very short indeed – but he kept his daybook with phonetically-spelled words and no proper grammar, documenting days and nights during the Blitz, putting out fires and sheltering during air raids and such. People find all kinds of incredible ways to write their stories, especially during wars, and so Maddie’s protests that she shouldn’t write, and Julie’s acrobatics to be permitted to write, didn’t strike me as wrong or odd.

In my own mind, I’ve given this book the Printz. Brides of Rollrock is a close runner-up, but I’m still waiting for someone to make me see why Seraphina is so highly regarded.

But Code Name Verity is a book that, simply in reading it, had a life-changing effect; I’ve read some excellent books this year, but nothing that hit so hard, and stayed with me so long, as this one.

Re the gun: within the pages of the text, Maddie has gone shooting and shot one or two pheasants; practiced to the degree that those around her call her a crack shot; shot the chains between two men so that neither were injured but the chain was broken. It has shown that Maddie knows how to shoot a gun.

“KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!”
Turned her face away from me to make it easier.
And I shot her.
I saw her body flinch–the blows knocked her head aside as though she’d been thumped in the face. Then she was gone.

I agree with Mark Flowers: Maddie should have killed Julie with a messy shot or two–cumulatively lethal. The impossible double-tap was there only to spare the readers’ feelings. We are meant to believe Julie didn’t suffer; we are meant to think Maddie will be able to console herself with that fact. It’s too close to telling me how to feel as a reader, and that makes me aware of the author in this scene. Killing Julie at all at that moment was merciful, I’m grown up enough to understand that.

This is a masterful piece of literature–look at me, complaining about a single letter “s” making a word plural– but it does suffer in this way: you can sometimes see the author wrangling with it, manipulating it, as in this case (and some of the other cases mentioned). It sometimes doesn’t look effortless. But it still deserves any award you want to give it for what it accomplishes, and a long, long life on the shelves.

(I’m the one who nominated SERAPHINA for the Pyrite Printz, and I’m in the middle of BRIDES and think it’s great. I ecstatic if either, especially SERAPHINA, won an Honor, but I’m not personally convinced that either are less flawed than CNV, though in quite different ways.)

Sophie, your point about YA or not is fascinating–I tend to end up on the side of yes it is, but more because of style and tone than because they’re necessarily still teens. Though it’s quite possible as Karyn points out, that they’re 19 or 20.

Timeline–it’s at least a few weeks; Karyn mentions six. To me, given that Maddie is alone in a foreign country and not sure whether her best friend is alive or dead, besides the fact that she has French Resistance laddies feeling her up–yes, the writing out of desperation in order to keep her sanity does work. But again, this is a point where I’m convinced and other readers may not be.

I largely agree with Karyn’s comment and think she has a fascinating theory about gendered responses. And Sophie–YES on all your points.

Finally Jamie/Maddie–I think that the text certainly hints at that relationship in the future while also acknowledging that the timing just is not going to happen. I’m thinking particularly of this passage (pg. 428 UK version): “Then just as I started to put power on, this hand on my shoulder. Just like that–nothing said. He just put his hand through the bulkhead, exactly as she’d done, and squeezed my shoulder. He has very strong fingers. And he kept his hand there the whole way home, even when he was reading the map and giving me headings. So I am not flying alone now after all.” However! I do see Eric’s point in that the focus of the story is so much not on romance (unless you’re reading Maddie/Julie differently than I personally do) and that that’s a very rare thing in YA at present, especially female friendship.

I’ve written this in about three different parts, so many apologies if it seems disjointed.