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 PrintableVersion Shelf lifeLooking at secular booksSUITE FRANCAISE Please forgive me if you are fed up with reviews of books about war and dislocation. I was going to find a light-hearted book to write about, but, having started Suite Francaise, I cannot but commend it to you. It is a sad book, which comes with its own sad story. Irene Nemirovsky was a Jewish- Russian ŽmigrŽ, a successful novelist when she began this work in 1941, the first two parts of what would have been a trio of writings about wartime France. She fled Paris with her children and husband as persecution increased and continued to write feverishly in a quiet village. It was from that rural refuge that she first, then her husband, were in 1942 taken to Auschwitz, where they died. Her two young daughters were saved by locals and preserved the leather-bound notebook in which Suite Francaise was discovered in the 1970s. Parisian exodusDespite this tragic origin, the book is not without humour or tenderness. In the first part, ‘Storm’, Irene Nemirovsky depicts the exodus from Paris in the few days before the armistice was signed and German occupation began. All classes scramble to save belongings, hide valuables and get out of danger, and as they scramble we see their vanity, selfishness and devotion to family. The author moves from one family group to another, and gradually the narratives begin to connect together. Part two is entitled ‘Dolce’ and centres on a German-occupied village. We see tensions rise as officers are billeted with women whose husbands are prisoners of war or away fighting, and the snobberies and suspicions of village life are heightened as collaboration begins. Nemirovsky had planned to unite these threads of plot together in the third part ‘Captivity’ which would have brought a very satisfying end to the work. Her notes contained in the appendix, together with some of her and her husband’s correspondence, make for moving reading. Under the skinThere are lots of reasons why this book is worth reading. Its historical content dramatises an important — and over here, perhaps neglected — dimension of the Second World War. The prose is beautiful, full of poised description of both the exquisite, say, a garden after rain, and the horrific, such as the bombing of a column of refugees. But what perhaps makes it so compelling is Nemirovsky’s ability to get under the skin of her characters, be they hypocrite, aesthete, ardent priest or frustrated wife. Critics argue about whether she was anti-Semitic, because, although Jewish by birth, she distanced herself from the Jewish community and, together with her husband, was a practising Catholic. Her presentation of faith is interesting, for although she reveals great vanity and hypocrisy in some of her religious characters, a young priest, Philippe, who appears early in the work, is the most compassionate and selfless individual in the book. In depicting him she shows an awareness of the difference between convenient religion and devotion to Christ. Do read this book, it is striking example of good fiction. Sarah Allen© Evangelicals Now - April 2008 |
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