Suite Francaise (French language edition) (French Edition) Review
Written during the German occupation of France, this stunning novel is nothing short of remarkable. What should have been a five part novel, only the first two parts were ever brought to completion. Tragically, Irene Nemirovsky died in a concentration camp in Poland in 1942. The manuscript was rescued by her oldest daughter, who originally thought it was her mother's journal. Finding it too painful to read, she tucked it away for 60 years. When she finally opened the pages, she found the handwritten story, Suite Francaise. It's survival, and publication is miraculous.
This is a two part story about people from different walks of life in 1940-41 Vichy France, and how each responds to the reality of war. The author was an eye witness, and that's what makes this book so special. It's difficult to imagine the incredible personal stress she must had been under during it's writing. Yet, you don't feel that sense of stress in the prose. I marvel at that. It's simply beautiful. The translation of the original French is outstanding too. There's no stumbling of words in the smooth narrative.
I did not have a single problem with the novel being unfinished. For me, that only added to it's haunting quality. Afterall, like her book, Irene Nemirovsky's life was sadly unfinished as well.
I highly recommend this to all readers. It's a must on your bookshelf.
Suite Francaise (French language edition) (French Edition) Overview
Suite Française is both a brilliant novel of wartime and an extraordinary historical document. An unmatched evocation of the exodus from Paris after the German invasion of 1940, and of life under the Nazi occupation, it was written by the esteemed French novelist Irène Némirovsky as events unfolded around her. This haunting masterpiece has been hailed by European critics as a
War and Peacefor the Second World War.
Though she conceived the book as a five-part work (based on the form of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony), Irène Némirovsky was able to write only the first two parts,
Storm in June and
Dolce, before she was arrested in July 1942. She died in Auschwitz the following month. The manuscript was saved by her young daughter Denise; it was only decades later that Denise learned that what she had imagined was her mother’s journal was in fact an invaluable work of art.
Storm in June takes place in the tumult of the evacuation from Paris in 1940, just before the arrival of the invading German army. It moves vividly between different levels of society–from the wealthy Péricand family, whose servants pack up their possessions for them, to a group of orphans from the 16th arrondissement
escaping in a military truck. Némirovsky’s immense canvas includes deserting soldiers and terrified secretaries, cynical bank directors and hapless priests, egotistical writers and hardscrabble prostitutes–all thrown together in a chaotic attempt to escape the capital. Moving between them chapter by chapter, this thrilling novel describes a journey hampered and in some cases abandoned because of confusion, shelling, rumour, lack of supplies, bad luck and ordinary human weakness. Cars break down or are stolen; relatives are forgotten; friends are divided; but there are also moments of love and charity. Throughout, whether depicting saintly forbearance or the basest selfishness,
Storm in June neither sweetens nor demonizes its characters; unsentimentally, with stunning perceptiveness, Némirovsky shows the complexities that mean no-one is simply a hero or villain.
The second volume,
Dolce, is set in the German-occupied village of Bussy. Again, Némirovsky switches seamlessly between social strata, from tenant farmers to the local aristocracy. The focus, however, is on the delicate, secret love affair between a German soldier and the French woman in whose house he has been billeted; the passion, doubts and deceits of their burgeoning relationship echo the complex mixture of hostility and acceptance felt by the occupied community as a whole. Némirovsky is amazingly sensitive in her depiction of changing, often contradictory emotions, but her attention to the personal is matched by her sharp-eyed discussion of small-town life and the politics of occupation. In this myth-dissolving book, the French villagers see the Germans as oppressive warriors, but also as handsome young men, and occupation does nothing to remedy the condescension and envy that bedevil relations between rich and poor.
Quite apart from the astonishing story of its survival,
Suite Française is a novel of genius and lasting artistic value. Subtle, often fiercely ironic, and deeply compassionate, it is both a piercing record of its time and a humane, profoundly moving novel.
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