Mass Market Paperback, 516 pages
English language
Published Aug. 7, 2007 by Vintage Books.
In 1941, Irene Némirovsky Sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. Némirovsky's death in Auschwitz in 1942 prevented her from seeing the day, sixty-five years later, that the existing two sections of her planned novel sequence, Suite Française, would be rediscovered and hailed as a masterpiece.
Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis, Suite Française falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation. Suite Française is a novel that teems with wonderful characters struggling with the new regime. However, amidst the mess of defeat, and all the hypocrisy and compromise, there is hope. True nobility and love exist, …
In 1941, Irene Némirovsky Sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. Némirovsky's death in Auschwitz in 1942 prevented her from seeing the day, sixty-five years later, that the existing two sections of her planned novel sequence, Suite Française, would be rediscovered and hailed as a masterpiece.
Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis, Suite Française falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation. Suite Française is a novel that teems with wonderful characters struggling with the new regime. However, amidst the mess of defeat, and all the hypocrisy and compromise, there is hope. True nobility and love exist, but often in surprising places. --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.
