Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirovsky

 

Suite Francaise is one of those books that I've been aware of for ages, and has even sat on the book case for a while, but for some strange reason it's taken me a while to actually pick it up and read it. I'm so glad I did though!

Suite Francaise covers the lives of ordinary citizen in France as it comes under German occupation during the Second World War. The book itself is split into two parts. The first follows a group of Parisians as they try to flee the invasion that is taking place around them. Different people, with very difference circumstances are all thrown together in an attempt to get out of the city that they love and find somewhere safe. Quick decisions have to be made as to what they can and should take with them.

The second part of the novel concentrates on a small rural community that is occupied by the Germans. German soldiers are living all around them, and with some of the families. Many of these soldiers though are young men, a long way away from their wives and family and some of the villagers struggle with the concept of these people being the enemy, but also fellow human beings at the same time.

The characters throughout this book are wonderful with their strength and (sometimes) honesty coming through clearly on the page. In a way it was a shame at the end of the first part of the book to leave those characters behind as the first half featured so many very different characters that I felt that some of them needed a bit more closure to them. Seeing how the people in the rural village coped under Nazi occupation was fascinating and also fitted with what I learnt about how some of the Channel Islanders coped during their occupation.

One of the fascinations behind Suite Francaise are the circumstances under which the book (translated from French) happened to be published in the first place. Irene Nemirovsky started writing the book in 1941, but being originally a Russian Jew she sadly dies in Auschwitz in 1942 as the Nazis did not recognise her conversion to Roman Catholicism. The manuscript was kept by her family without realising what it was. Her eldest daughter, Denise, assumed that it was some sort of a diary and it was 50 years before she even read it. It was only then that she decided to donate her mother's papers to a French archive that she started to discover the story the pages held. The book was finally published in France in 2004 and went on to become a best seller. It has since been translated into at least 38 different languages and gone on to be a worldwide bestseller.

Following on from the success of Suite Francais, more of Nemirovsky's work has been translated into English and I'll definitely be looking to get my hands on some of it.