Suite Française (#26)

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book as one of your summer vacation reads... but that's what it kind of ended up being for me... well kind of, as it didn't even make it out of the suitcase during our Colorado trip.  Fortunately, I was at a good breaking point

... in Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Française, which is two of what was expected to be a collection of five novellas about World War II France.  I pretty much finished the first novella prior to our trip.  "Storm in June" focuses in on the evacuation of Paris prior to the German invasion.  It is told from many points of view... young and old, priviliged and working class... as the refugees flee South and clog the streets and overwhelm villages along the way.  The second novella, "Dolce" (and read post-road trip), is about the German occupation of a small French village.

I found "Storm in June" to be a bit confusing.  As noted, there were a lot of different characters that I found it difficult to keep track of.  Often I would just continue to plug away and usually I would figure out who was who.  Also, some of the upper-class characters were not terribly likable... which I guess was the point... being a bit stunned and outraged that they would have to face such things as food and fuel shortages, just like everyone else.  Honestly, I never knew this fleeing of Paris... so it was interesting, but I found it all a bit disjointed... more vignettes vs. one cohesive narrative.

"Dolce" was easier to digest.  While faced again with a series of characters, this one had a more appetizing storyline with a young French woman, likely a war widow, falling in love with one of the German soldiers occupying her village.  Another sub-plot line involving murder, jealousy, and patriotism keeps things moving in a more focused and "traditional" narrative.

This was not my favorite read of the year... it wasn't easy reading and I found it be a bit disjointed and unpolished at times... as is often the case in translations... but there was good reason.  What makes this an extraordinary work is the real-life backstory... well-documented in the introduction and appendices. 

First off, Nemirvosky wrote these pieces while these events were happening.  The third novella was to be titled "Captivity" and the final two works Nemirovsky wrote "well that's God's secret and what I wouldn't give to know it."

Nemirovsky never would know.  A well-regarded author in France, Nemirovsky was a Russian immigrant... and Jewish.  In 1942, she was arrested and died at Auschwitz at the age of 39.  The appendices include letters Nemirovsky's husband, Michel, wrote trying to find out about what happened to his wife -- some of them heartbreakingly after her death.  Michel would meet the same fate -- gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz later that same year. 

Nemirovsky's two daughters survived the War.  Thinking the notebooks were just a private diary and fearful of digging up painful past demons, nearly 60 years passed before these final works of fiction to see the proverbial light of day.

2007 10K Reading Challenge:  + 431 pages (Total Pages: 8049 pages)