Suite Francaise

Amazing!!!!! I love this book!!! I've told everyone I know about this book. This book really makes you think. It makes you laugh. It makes you really appreciate the life and freedom you have. Truley amazing. I couldn't wait to get home every day and read it.

Author's descriptions and characterizations are outstanding. She give you a clear image of the events and of personalities, and how people reacted to what was going on in France during the German occupation. Also her notes included at the back of the volume give you a window on her creative process.

This novel is remarkable in several ways: how it came to be published, its structure, and it contains the author's notes and correspondence during this period. And it's a good read.

Russian-born Irène Némirovsky established herself as a writer in Paris in 1929 at age twenty-six with the publication of her first novel, David Golder, which was an overnight success. She began Suite Francaise early in the 1940s. From her notes, it's clear that the story was meant to be an epic novel; however, Nemirovsky was taken by the Germans in July 1942 and died in a concentration camp in August. Fortunately, friends were able to take her two young daughters away before they were captured. As a remembrance, the daughters took with them what they thought was their mother's journals. It was more than fifty years later before they could bring themselves to read them. What they discovered were the two novellas their mother had written that were the beginnings of a larger novel, which would be published as Suite Francaise.

Though this is a novel, its origins clearly were in Nemirovsky's own experiences. When World War II broke out, she and her husband took their daughters to the countryside outside Paris to stay. The couple continued to live in Paris for a while, commuting to see the girls, before they eventually also left.

From the beginning, this book draws you in and transports to that time and place. The author's sense of place and understanding of human nature is reflected over and over in the lives of the characters who flee the Nazi occupation of Paris. Though the individuals are very different, they reflect the same sense of denial over what is happening to them. How they cope with the change in their own lives and with what is happening to their country is what Nemirovsky writes about so beautifully. She presents the German soldiers in the same way she presents her French characters--as human beings caught in a terrible tragedy. She doesn't make the Germans appear as the "bad guys," but tells a story that rings with truth.

The book's translator indicates that Nemirovsky envisioned the entire book to be like a musical composition. It's too bad that we were denied this. These two novellas give you enough to imagine what a great composition it would have been.

by Penny Appleby
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

I loved this book! It was clear by the end that the author had intended it to be part of a series... I was sad to see it end (somewhat) unfinished. I loved the stories and if you like reading about the French, you'll get a kick out of this book. A good read, indeed. :)

The book provides an intimate look into the lives of some French families just prior, during and after the German invasion of Paris and the surrounding areas. These persepectives show the different social classes of the French and also provide a small glimpse into the day to day interaction with German officers and soldiers.