I have googled to see if anyone has sued Kristen Hannah for plagiarism or if there was some reason for the 2 books being so similar. The only thing I can find is someone on Good Reads commenting that they noticed the same similarities. But I could not find anything else mentioning the 2 books. The author of Suite Francaise, Irène Némirovsky, was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. Her daughter carried her mother’s handwritten novels around for 60 years without reading them. They were finally published in 2004. Kristen Hannah didn’t publish The Nightingale until 2015. I actually stopped watching the movie halfway through because I still have 10 hours left to listen to in the audiobook, and it cost me money. The movie is free on Tubi right now. This is just too weird for words. I don’t know if there is some copywriting loophole that would allow someone to use another’s work if they died before it was published, but this does not feel right. I have never read Kristen Hannah’s novels before, so I cant really comment if it’s in her style or not.
by DonnaPezzle
2 Comments
The war was real. The French Resistance was real. The escape trail through the mountains was real. War-time romance across the lines was real. There are many, many stories like these in print, film, family stories, short stories, and narratives of all kinds. Hannah’s book is meant to tell the story of how it was, and how these sorts of things came about; to reflect on the heartaches, tragedy, and heroism of the times. To even propose the idea that a work of historic fiction involving a world event of this magnitude is plagiarized is both petty and ridiculous.
I’m now diving head first into this rabbit hole. It appears Irène Némirovsky had 2 daughters Elisabeth Gille and Denise Epstein whom have both died. I can’t find any info if they have children or surviving relatives. They are French and I’m in the states, so obituary info isn’t as readily available there (as far as I can see). I should probably finish the book before I get crazy about defending Ms. Némirovsky’s words, but there were way too many similarities in plot points and chronology of the story for it to be a coincidence.