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Suite Française (精装)
by Irene Némirovsky
| Category:
World War II, French society during WWII, History of Europe, Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 268.00
MSL price:
¥ 248.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A remarkable piece of art and a captivating blend of fiction and fact, history and storytelling, this book is a WWII classic of chaos, fear and loss. |
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AllReviews |
  1 2 Total 2 pages 15 items |
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Margaret Graham (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-25 00:00>
For once the hype is justified. This is an engrossing book, full of little insights and absurd situations (one fellow who survives the invasion gets hit by a car when he returns to Paris).
This is only the first two sections of what Nemirovsky intended as a five parter (the thing probably would have come close to a thousand pages). The first section is a harrowing account of the exodus from Paris in June 1940,as people from all classes-the wealthy and connected Pericands, the snotty writer Gabriel Corte, and the ordinary (and likable) Michands flee from the impending takeover by the Germans. People run out of food, there's nowhere to sleep, train tracks are bombed and cars run out of fuel. It's hard reading (especially when you hear the news from places like Darfur. Nothing has improved in close to seventy years).
The second half of the book is about the German occupation of a small French village. And here Nemirovsky introduces a whole new set of characters. Middle-class Lucile and her dreadful mother-in-law, the rural Sabaries, the local viscomte and his lady all struggle to get along with their German occupiers-most of whom behave themselves and would rather be somewhere else. There's a lot in this section about this weird relationship between conquerer and conquered. Some of the French like some of the Germans as people, but despise them as Germans. (the Germans were pretty well-behaved in France in the first years of the war). This section ends in June of 1941,when the regiment is sent to Russia.
Interestingly, there isn't much in this book about politics; after all, Nemirovsky was writng about the war as it was actually occurring. There are the barest mentions of de Gaul, the Communists, the British. A local farmer kills a German soldier and goes into hiding, but that's as close as we get to anything about the Resistence.
Nemirovsky was of Jewish origin, and in 1942 she was hunted down by French Fascist police and deported to Poland (she died at Auschwitz). Her death is not automatically any worse than the deaths of twelve million other people. But as I was finishing this great unfinished work, knowing that in the next section the separate story lines would begin to converge, and we would find out what happened to all of these people, I felt such a sense of loss. I'm glad that Nemirovsky's daughters saved this manuscript,and that it's finally been published. It's not only a great piece of modern fiction. It's a testament to what everyone-us included-lost in those years. |
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Dennis Frampton (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-25 00:00>
This novel bridges the divide between fact and fiction and as such is just my cup of tea. Irène Némirovsky, a successful Russian born novelist, was living in Paris at the start of the second world war - 1939. Although of Jewish parentage, she was in fact a Catholic, married and with two small children. By 1940 it was clear that France would be overthrown and Paris would be occupied by the Nazis. The Parisienne, and particularly the Jewish citizens of Paris, on hearing the guns of war outside their city, then proceeded by the thousands, to flee, and make for the rural communities of France hoping to avoid the wrath of the Nazis. In the case of the Jews, it was in order to save their lives. Némirovsky and her family fled to a small town in central France and she began to write the first of what she planned to be a series of four or five stories about the French experience during the war. She had completed her drafts of the first two of these, when she was discovered by the German SS and sent immediately to a concentration camp. Within a month, at the age of 39, she was executed. After a relatively short time her husband suffered the same fate. The children were taken by a friend and hidden from the Nazis for the duration of the war, and survived. They took their Mother's manuscript into hiding with them and some 60 years later, it was taken by Némirovsky's daughter, Denise Epstein to a publisher. It was published first in France, where it has already been very successful, and with a fine translation by Sandra Smith, now in English. The first of the two stories, "Storm in June" tells of the mass, panic exodus at the eleventh hour from Paris, where families, some of them used to a life of luxury, and most used to a degree of comfort and pleasure, were thrown into a situation where they had no control over their circumstances, and where real friends were distinguished from the fair-weather kind. Some of them found tolerable accommodation, some eventually returned to Paris, and some died under the guns of German fighter planes. The second story, is titled "Dolce" and it continues from the first in telling of life for the evacuees in a small rural village, occupied by German soldiers. Some of the French accommodated themselves to the soldiers and adapted a lifestyle in spite of them, some never accepted their presence, some resisted, some collaborated and some died. These are not great stories, but they are told with a sensitivity which could only come from the pen of a very good writer. Unfortunately, she never had the opportunity to review and polish them and the translator has faithfully translated leaving what errors there may be in place. There are two appendices in the book, the first containing the author's notes, the second contains her correspondence at the time. They add a considerable measure of poignancy to the stories, and in fact, I recommend that you read them first. It is a wonderful story, hailed in Europe as a French Anne Frank. I heartily recommend it to you.
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David Zimmermann (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-25 00:00>
Both the novel and the story of how it was written and published make this one of the most affecting books I've read in a long time. Ms. Nemirovsky, born to a Jewish family in the Ukraine, moved to Paris with her banker father as a girl (as a result of the Russian Revolution). A talented writer, she progressed to become one of the most well-regarded novelists of pre-World War II Europe. When the Germans took over France, Irene's Jewish heritage (she was married to a Catholic and by then had converted herself) proved a liability. She finished two fifths of a series of novels about World War II and the occupation before being deported and eventually killed by the Nazis in 1942. The novels weren't published in Nemirovsky's lifetime--the manuscripts were discovered, translated and published first in French in 2004 and then in English in 2006. "Storm in June" tells the story of the evacuation of Paris; "Dolce" relates the experiences of people in the French countryside as their homes and towns are occupied by German soldiers. According to her notes, Nemirovsky's goal was to tell how the war affected the day to day lives of the people of Europe. As such, there is very little description of military action or campaigns--moreso, she describes the range of reactions to both the need for evacuation and the circumstances of the occupation. As a bonus, her writing is so beautiful (even translated into English), that much of the book is like reading a long poem. I wish I knew French. The stories she tells are heartbreaking enough; maybe more heartbreaking is the denial of her genius for readers of the rest of the 20th century. Very highly recommended--it's the best book I've read this year, and maybe for several years.
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Robert Derenthal (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-25 00:00>
Most fiction writers don't have to live through a tragedy at the same time that they are writing a novel about it. In this particular case the author of Suite Francaise doesn't survive long enough to finish the short trilogy on WWII that she was writing.
The first short novel, "Storm in June" describes the panicky, unprepared migration of Parisians from the city to the countryside, and the second novel "Dolce" tells us about life in a small town under German occupation. In the first book we follow various individuals and families as they flee the invasion. In this character study we find that there are few French heroes. Nemirovsky is particularly hard on the well to do; they are selfish and full of their own self importance. It is the poorer village dwellers that go out of their way to help feed and shelter the evacuees. A few of the Parisians die, and in a way that is abrupt and stunning. It is interesting that the author aims most of her scorn at the wealthy in so far as she came from an extremely wealthy family and had a degree of fame herself as a French author.
In Dolce we see townsfolk adapting to German occupation. The French men smolder with hate for the intruders while many of the younger women seem to fall for the charms of the young, handsome German soldiers. The protagonist of this novel is Lucille Angellier, who lives with her mother-in-law while her husband languishes in a German POW camp. Her mother-in-law detests Lucille partly because she thinks Lucille is too friendly with a German officer who is living with them. This feeling of hate is reciprocated by Lucille. A bonding does begin when Lucille engages in a heroic, life threatening act of defiance.
These two novels provide an amazing picture of life during a horrible part of history. The book impresses you with its realism, nothing melodramatic, just people figuring out how to survive. The portion of the book describing Lucille and her mother-in-law may be a bit autobiographical as Nemirovsky and her mother also had a cold relationship.
It is interesting to note that although the author was Jewish, and would die in Auschwitz in 1942, she makes no mention at all of the plight of Jews in Germany or France.
I have read a lot of books on WWII, but this is an unusually fascinating product of that period. Included in the book are Nemirovsky's notes for writing the book and some letters from her husband written to various people trying to secure their help in getting his wife released from German custody. Finally there is a nine page biography of the author. It's short but it's spellbinding reading.
A very notable book. Don't miss reading it. |
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Jim Ferguson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-25 00:00>
After reading the first two parts of what was intended to be a five-part novel, all I can say is that it is truly a shame Irene Nemirovsky didn't have the opportunity to finish this entrancing novel. The fact that she wrote this novel while experiencing the events in France during WWII no doubt gives the narrative its powerful sense of immediacy, yet there is a contemplative air to the passages which makes this novel all the more amazing that she could conceive such a narrative and develop it so fully with the war swirling around her.
"Storm in June" reads as an exodus, as Parisiens are forced to leave their beloved city and seek refuge in the country. What follows is a compelling set of situations loosely revolving around two families and an elderly couple, as they find their worlds torn out from under them. The Pericand family takes center stage, as their aristocratic sensibilities are put to the test, but probably the most compelling family are the Michauds, a middle-aged couple, who fail in escaping the city and are left to wonder of the fate of their son Jean-Marie who finds himself convelescing in a remote village, where he attracts the interest of a young farm girl.
However, Nemirovsky avoids letting this novel fall into a set of romantic yearnings. Instead, we see what families are forced to go through during the occupation of France in the second part, "Dolce," which picks up the action in the village Jean-Marie had been interned. The occupation doesn't take on the ominous tone of a concentration camp, but rather a form of house arrest, as the Germans treat their captives in a seemingly respectful way, and the French provincial families are forced to reciprocate. I expected a little more tension, but again it seems Nemirovsky didn't want this book to become too melodramatic, but rather show what she regarded as the natural feelings of her characters. In this sense, the novel reminded me more of Chekhov than it did Tolstoy, as she avoided the pedantic tone common to Tolstoy's novels.
One gets a hint of the third part, "Captivity," to come at the end of "Dolce," as she began to plot her action for the subsequent chapters, but sadly we can only speculate what she had in mind from the endnotes which are provided in this book. There has been some speculation as to whether this book is an elaborate ruse, as it seems impropable that someone could keep her head together so well during the war, especially when she faced being sent to a concentration camp, where Nemirovsky subsequently died. But, I think we can dispell such notions, as her painstakingly written pages have been scrutinized and are in character with the other novels she wrote before the war, such as David Golder, which is due for release in February, 2007. |
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1 2 Total 2 pages 15 items |
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