Encoded

            I just finished reading the book Code Name- Verity by Elizabeth Wein. The book takes place during World War Two in various places across England and France. The book starts as a first person narrated tale. We don't know who the narrator is, but we can assume she is a girl, probably around 17-23 based on her tales of school, her vocabulary, and her job. The job, we find, is spying as she says that she was "under-cover" and that she was chosen for her aptitude for "making up stories" and "blending into a crowd." But this journal is not from the point of view of a spy on a mission, it is an account of treason, betrayal, and most of all loyalties. The narrator is trapped in a Nazi prison, under the watchful eyes of the Gestapo (the "police" who enforce Fuhrer Hitler's decrees). She has just emerged from four days of torture that includes being held underwater until she fainted, being burned with a red hot poker and being hit and lashed with various instruments. However, she has made a deal with the Gestapo captain von Linden. She will write everything she knows about the British war effort in an account in exchange for an end of the torture. She also buys back her clothing with eleven sets of British wireless code. The narrator feels extremely guilty and awful about giving away the code and details, but we are shown that she feels the endless torture she could have endured, like her fellow prisoners who scorn her treason, would be unbearable. She begins to tell the story of her friend Maddie who flew her into france employing novelistic techniques and bargaining for more time all the way, while her desperation in response for her imminent departure to a concentration camp grows.
            I had mixed feelings about the narrator, it seemed she was a vain and dull girl. In exchange for the codes she could have bargained for her freedom or asked for food. Instead she says that she is content to be interrogated starving and dirty, if she gets to wear clothes. Also, she does not seem extremely guilty about giving up the code or her accounts after the initial mention she puts down in her account. This makes me think about her character role as a heroine. Is she a heroine who has endured torture and survived? or is she a weaker character who gives in quickly? It does not seem to fit. Another   missing puzzle piece was her intelligence. In the account of her friend Maddie's travels and career she speaks of herself in third person, as "Queenie." Queenie is smart and adept, she is calm under pressure and very clever and confidant. Queenie does not sound at all like the narrator who strikes me as dumb or at least shallow. Also, all across the story, random lines are underlined. Very little of the story sounds believable.
          Then the tale cuts to Maddie and suddenly everything makes sense. The eleven sets of wireless code were false sets that connected to dead radios. The radios were shown in pictures of the wreckage of the plane she flew in on, given to her to convince her that Maddie was dead. The account was fake, she wasn't really guilty about the code or even as shallow as she seemed. The journal was just feeding von Linden another identity, to make him trust her. Maddie tracks down von Linden's house keeper and gets the journal, which she realizes has information about how to find her prison and how to get the prisoners out. We find out that when "Queenie" says "red is her color" (referring to her watch guard) she means that the underlined red passages were made by the guard, who is risking everything to help "queenie."
           Wein takes us on a journey with the characters. We as the readers are not omniscient, we are fooled along with von Linden and the Gestapo as to the character of "Queenie." It takes Maddie's piercing and logical gaze to lend us the sight to see who she really is.  Although the book is confusing because of this, it also makes it unforgettable. Wein's book is  made tenfold more interesting and arresting than if she had let us see everything. I recommend it heartily as both a heartbreaking historical fiction novel, but also as a brain teaser.