The Secret of the Nightingale Palace: A Novel
It took more than an opportunity to drive her estranged grandmother’s vintage Rolls Royce across the country to get Anna Rosenthal into the driver’s seat— especially when she knew her cantankerous grandmother Goldie Rosenthal would be sitting at her side. It wasn’t love, but honor, that made her slide behind the wheel.
During the height of World War II, Goldie had been entrusted with a book of priceless Japanese paintings, left to her by her best friend as her own family was hauled off to an internment camp in the Utah desert. Now decades later Goldie has decided to make the trip from her home in New York City to the last place she knew her friend, San Francisco.
Whether it is out of pragmatic need to get out of the city for tax reasons or to try to haul Anna out of the funk she’s suffered through since the death of her husband two years before, Goldie is determined to drive the distance.
Along the way, she and Anna come to a tentative truce, and the details of Goldie’s past are revealed. Anna is forced to examine her own life and to decide if she’s strong enough to go on with her life.
Set alternately in a contemporary American road trip and in San Francisco of the 1940s, The Secret of the Nightingale Palace is well-researched and lushly described.
Dana Sachs has a lovely ability to bring the sights and sounds of wartime America to life, and she definitely has a way with her characters. Goldie is vain and crabby, a snob to the core; Anna, for her part, is a milquetoast of a woman, torn between going on with her life and guilt for the indifference she felt for her dead husband. Though largely unlikable, both women are written realistically.
Characters in the present day are sketched rather than fleshed out, but then they don’t make much of an appearance. Those in the 1940s, by way of contrast, are rounded and believable, complete characters. Goldie’s story is particularly well done, with detail and richness.
Given all of its virtues, The Secret of the Nightingale Palace should have by all rights have been a home run hit. Why, then was it so very difficult to get through?
Perhaps the fault lies in the framing story. While Goldie’s youth is quite compelling, it never quite gels with Anna’s story.
In the 1940s we see the young Goldie, at the outset of her social climb. She’s young and gauche, finding out what love means in an awkward time. She grows over time, changes in ways good and bad, and we are privileged to witness it.
Unfortunately, Anna isn’t so lucky. Ms. Sachs has not written her story in a manner that indicates Anna is privy to any of the information fed to the reader. That makes it hard to understand how, in the here and now, Goldie expects their journey to change or help Anna in any way.
From beginning to end, Anna is a lost woman traveling with her unlikeable grandmother. We are treated to her worry, and to troubling stories of her troubled marriage. Readers can see where Goldie and Anna’s stories intersect and how Goldie’s past could positively influence Anna’s present, but Anna has no such information.
Though that makes Anna’s lack of growth understandable (and her actions near the end of the story slightly unbelievable), it doesn’t make it any easier to slog through a story that feels like it’s going nowhere.
Neither main character ends up with many redeeming qualities.
The actual “secret” is a little bit unexpected and is probably meant to be romantic. In actuality, it leaves a rather sour taste in the mouth, another note of selfishness from two selfish people.
The Secret of the Nightingale Palace has been well reviewed, and Ms. Sachs can definitely write. If one can forget that Anna knows nothing of the past, perhaps the end of her story is acceptable. To wish that the framing story had been left off and more time given to Goldie’s youth seems unkind, but it’s an honest reaction.