Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky

Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher, Year: Knopf, 2006
Other Works: David Golder
Flags: Adult themes
Rating: A+, or Must Read Now!
Premise: The book is written in parts and follows the stories of several people as they flee and cope with the German occupation in France. The author was captured and killed before she could complete it.

Honestly, this book took me quite by surprise. I had all kinds of ideas of how it would play out before I turned the first page, but it was so different than any other WW II book I've ever read. I really got lost in Némirovsky's language; I can hardly believe it was a translation.

At first, it was a little difficult for me to follow all of the characters and keep their stories straight, but once I was past the first few chapters, it started to come together for me. I hardly even know what to write, seriously this book has me sort of bewildered. All of the people she profiles in the novel are so different but at the same time so similar. Such a stark picture of humanity, showing the good and the bad, the pride and the humility, side by side and tumbled together. +/-

The thing I liked about Dolce was how confusing it was. How different people viewed the occupation and their motivations. That was one thing I think Némirovsky captured so perfectly in both parts of the novel: people's motivation and nature. The occupation was such an emotionally charged subject, I think the author expertly presented how muddled and complicated it was.

In a way, it seems right that this book was written during the war, and not altered (even though I still wish it could have been completed). It seems like reality tends to get distorted when it's reflected on from memory. It's human nature to want to think of yourself and your people as brave and strong. But this book reveals something more intrinsic to our core values, something more selfish and self serving, especially in such desperate times. Perhaps that's why heroism is so treasured in society—because truly there are few who, when faced with such dire tragedy, would act unselfishly. That's a strong bit of truth to swallow.

It was hard for me not to think about Némirovsky's untimely death as I was reading the novel. Really the most heartbreaking thing about this book is that it is unfinished. It makes me wonder how her book would have evolved had she been given the time to finish it. At one point in the book, Jean-Marie, during his rehabilitation, finds time to write:

He wrote with a chewed-up pencil stub, in a little notebook which he hid against his heart. He felt he had to hurry: something inside him was making him anxious, was knocking on an invisible door. By writing, he opened that door, he gave life to something that wished to be born. Then suddenly, he would become discouraged, feel disheartened, weary. He was mad. What was he doing writing these stupid stories, letting himself be pampered by the farmer's wife, while his friends were in prison, his despairing parents thought he was dead, when the future was so uncertain, the past so bleak?

When I read that I couldn't help but wonder if that was how Némirovsky felt about her own life, about this book she was working on. I think she must have worried that no one would read it. But, she had to give life to it anyway, because this story wished to be born. And, I'm so glad she did. If you haven’t visited this site yet, I strongly urge you to do so. =)

This is definitely one I think I will re-read in the future—there’s so much I think I missed in my whirlwind reading.

BC About the Author: Irène Némirovsky

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and emigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne, she began to write and swiftly achieved success with her first novel, David Golder, which was followed by more than a dozen other books. She was arrested by the French police in July 1942 and died in Auschwitz in August, aged 39 (although having converted to Catholicism in 1939, she was Jewish by descent). Her husband, Michel Epstein, was arrested by the French police a few months later in November 1942, and was sent straight to the gas chambers in Auschwitz.

Immediately after arresting Michel, the police went in search of their two +/-

children, Denise and Elisabeth (Babet), then aged five and ten, but Denise's school teacher hid her behind her bed and the two girls were able to flee in the care of their governess and family friend, Julie Dumot. Before leaving Denise put her mother's manuscript in her suitcase as a memento of her mother. They spent the rest of the war moving from place to place, staying one step ahead of the police, who continued to hunt for them.

When the war was over, the two girls went to their grandmother's house for help. Their grandmother was very wealthy and had spent the war in great comfort in the South of France. But she refused to help the girls and told them to go to an orphanage. Each day Denise and Elisabeth would go to the train station with signs around their necks to meet the trains with survivors from the camps, and also to a hotel that had been turned into a reception area for returning deportees, but to no avail.

Many years passed and Denise and Elisabeth could never bring themselves to read the notebooks. Eventually, they agreed to entrust their mother's notebooks to an organization dedicated to documenting memories, but before giving them up, Denise decided to type the notes out. It was only then that they realized that these were not the notes of a private diary, as they had assumed, but a vivid snapshot of France and the French--spineless, defeated, and occupied. Elisabeth died in 1996 without having read the manuscript, but earlier she had written a magnificently imagined biography of her mother, Le Mirador (The Watchtower) who she never had the chance to know--being only five years old when Irene died in Auschwitz. More than 60 years later, Suite Française, was published posthumously, for the first time, in 2006. The book has sold 600,000 copies in French and close to one million more in 30 other languages.

To find out more about Irène's life, check out this article from the BBC. Still want more? Have a look at this site that's been put together as a companion to an exhibition, called Woman of Letters, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. (It will be open until August 30th.) This website is great because you can see photos of the manuscript (you can actually "manually" flip through the manuscript) and other artifacts from Irene's life. You can actually hear the curator of the museum through pre-recorded snippets that go along with each item. There is also a short video by Denise, talking about her mother's early life. So, you get pretty close to an actual hands-on experience without visiting the museum. Enjoy!