Suite Française
Suite Française is the incredible incomplete set of novels by Irene Nemirovsky, a Russian Jew who had been living in Paris for 10 years before ultimately dying in Auschwitz. The preface to the French edition states that:
She dreamed of a book of a thousand pages, constructed like a symphony, but in five sections, according to rhythm and tone. She took Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as a model.
Sadly, only two of the planned five were completed. In these stories, she creates such vivid characters and situations that it is a shame we never get to find out what happened to them. She was a fine writer. Her characters were so well-defined; I cared about the worthy ones and loathed the loathsome ones. Even in her description of the latter, there was humor to be found. Both good and bad die, and of course the question is always, “Why?” The accounts of the flight from Paris as the Germans descended on them during 1940 were chilling and frighteningly relevant to what could happen today. Then, during the section depicting the occupation of France, I was most surprised at her portrayal of the German soldiers, in which some could be seen as sympathetic.
Her two daughters had kept these stories in a suitcase for years, not even looking at them as it was too painful. When one of her daughters did finally take out the papers to type them, she found this wonderful, incomplete novel and it was published in France in 2004, sixty-two years after her death in 1942.
Highly recommended.
2006 for the English translation, 367 pp.
Rating: 4.5
This is on my to read list, thanks for the review it sounds great.
I also recently finished Suite Francaise, and it’s still lingering in my consciousness. I found it stunning. I’ve been to Auschwitz, and the Holocaust is personalized, for me, moreso when I read what I consider to be a great work of literature by someone deemed unworthy of life. Is something similar happening now, I wonder, in Iraq, or is a great writer or painter tucked away in Guantanamo for our “safety”?
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