Paperback, 405 pages
English language
Published by Vintage Books.
France, 1940. Lucile Angellier's husband has been captured as a prisoner-of-war, and all she can do is wait for him — and tend to the household controlled by her domineering mother-in-law. Their small village is soon occupied by a regiment of German soldiers, forcing the locals to coexist with an invading Nazi force.
Lieutenant Bruno von Falk takes up lodging with the Angellier women, and Lucile struggles with her growing feelings for the officer — a powerful love draws them together, and they fall victim to the tragedy of war.
Irene Némirovsky began writing Suite Francaise in 1940, but her death in Auschwitz prevented her from seeing the day, sixty-five years later, that the novel would be discovered by her daughter and hailed worldwide as a masterpiece. --back cover
I thought the first novella, about the exodus from Paris during the invasion of the German army in 1940, the more interesting of the two. Overall, a good read, but I wanted to like it more.
Unfinished and unedited but there are moments where Nemirovsky's ability to describe humans - the pettiness, the narcissism, the justifications, the ability to go on like nothing is happening - and the way there can be so much normalcy in the middle of apocalypse. Reading it after experiencing humanity the last couple of years really answers that question, "but how?".
If only she got to finish all five of the chapters she wanted to finish.
I haven't read any of her other books, but [author: Irene Nemirovsky] was a writer of extraordinary talent. Her characters, Her attention to detail and her ability to inhabit a future that she would never know are the reasons that this book is a great work of literature, despite the fact that she was never able to finish the book.
