Suite Francaise (Vintage International)

by Irene Nemirovsky

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control during World War II—a heartrending "portrait of a small French town under seige, and the people trying to survive, even to live, as Hitler’s horrors march closer and closer to their doors" (New York).

“Stunning.... A tour de force.” —The New York Times Book Review

Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940, as Parisians flee the city, human folly surfaces in every imaginable way: a wealthy mother searches for sweets in a town without food; a couple is terrified at the thought of losing their jobs, even as their world begins to fall apart. Moving on to a provincial village now occupied by German soldiers, the locals must learn to coexist with the enemy—in their town, their homes, even in their hearts.

When Irène Némirovsky began working on Suite Française, she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For sixty-four years, this novel remained hidden and unknown.

• ISBN10: 1400096278
• ISBN13: 9781400096275
• Publish Date: 10 April 2007 (first published 16 March 2006)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Vintage Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 448
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781400096275

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

On judging books by covers, this was exactly opposite of anything I expected. In short, a plain-clothed masterpiece, written by someone who knew Tolstoy by heart; what he did for Moscow in 1812, 1817, Némirovsky begins for Paris in 1940. It's not a book about war; it's a book about the men and the women, good and better and worse, living so tangled and fragile in the midst of it. "What lives on:" writes Némirovsky as some of her final words to survive, "1, Our humble day-to-day lives. 2, Art. 3, God." She wanted a symphony; she created the opening strains. As she notes Forster on the similarly composed War and Peace, with "expansion. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out." Pieces of a much grander whole.

Although, granted, completion in any sense was less and less an option; something she would grasp, writing history as history was writing itself, working all the more furiously as time ran itself out. On 28 June, 1941, her journal takes note of events that would inspire the poignant end of Dolce, the second volume of her intended five, as German forces take leave of the occupied French village:

"They're leaving. They were depressed for twenty-four hours, now they're cheerful, especially when they're together. The little dear one sadly said, 'The happy times are over.' They're sending their packages home. They're overexcited, that's obvious. Admirably disciplined and, I think, no rebellion in their hearts. I swear here and now never again to take out my bitterness, no matter how justifiable, on a group of people, whatever their race, religious, convictions, prejudices, errors. I feel sorry for these poor children. But I cannot forgive certain individuals, those who reject me, those who coldly abandon us, those who are prepared to stab you in the back. These people... if I ever get my hands on them... When will it all end? The troops that were here last summer said 'Christmas,' then July. Now end '41."

"I must create something great," she writes soon thereafter, "and stop wondering if there's any point." Sixty-four years later and it has survived with the greatest of these: our humble lives, our art, our God. There is a point, and it's everything necessary.