filling my patch of sky

When it comes to choosing a novel to spend my time on, I tend to stick with the classics or go with those that come highly recommended. My aunt—who is a voracious reader—and I swap books, and she raved about a novel titled Sweet Francaise, insisting I read it. I’m so glad I did!

This story—and the author’s own—has stayed with me. I find my thoughts drifting back to situations portrayed in the book, as well as to the author’s life, which is outlined afterward. Here’s my brief review, not only on the book, but also on the connection between the author and the story itself.

____________________________

Suite Francaise is set in Nazi-occupied France. The story details the connectedness of family, friends, and acquaintances in their attempts to survive the upheaval of their lives, towns, and country during war. It is woven together with threads that overlap in unexpected ways with characters that are robust and endearing.

The author, Irene Nemirovsky, lived out this sort of survival firsthand—she and her family, who were of Jewish origin, were confined to their home and unable to travel or work during the Nazi occupation in France. Food and money were scarce but friends helped them as best they could.

Nemirovsky was eventually arrested and sent to a concentration camp where she soon succumbed to illness in its infirmary. Her husband was also murdered, not long after that, in another camp. Their two daughters were thereafter cared for by their nanny; they lived on the run from the police for several years. From hideout to hideout, the girls carried their mother’s writing stachel. Youth—and the sorrow and trauma of being orphaned—prevented the girls from opening and perusing their mother’s journals. Some 60 years later, in 2000, these women finally sifted through the papers, discovering an almost complete novel within their mother’s notes. They then set to give their mother’s last work to the world. Sweet Francaise was published in 2007.

I’ve read several biographies of those who survived the camps, so I have a general knowledge of the unfolding of terror across Europe during that time. It was interesting to read a fictional rendering of an author’s firsthand experiences.

What was most chilling was the author’s silence on the Nazi extermination plans via concentration camps. It seems, from Nemirovsky’s perspective, that this was “merely” an ugly war like all wars. On our side of history, however, hindsight reveals that this was no typical war, and therefore, Suite Francaise is no typical war novel. For early in the 1940s, who could have imagined the grotesque atrocities that fueled the Nazi extermination plan? Who could have thought that this was more than the typical ugliness of war? And if Nemirovsky knew of it, certainly she would have woven that into at least one of the various story lines.

The absence of any reference to the Nazi camps made my heart heavy as I journeyed with the book’s characters—it was as if I had a tidbit of information the characters ought to know and I was unable to tell them. I wanted to scream at them, to tell them to take all precaution to save themselves from what was to come. Knowing that this story was written without those camps as a point of reference provided it with an odd sort of innocence, one that was certainly shredded when the author came to know those camps herself. But by then, she could not weave it into her tale, for it was too late.

Truly, this is one of the best novels I’ve read in years. And with the positive press being received, it won’t soon be forgotten.

[On July 11, I was contacted by the Museum of Jewish History in response to my reviews on this book. They wanted to let me know of a new feature that will run through mid-March 2009: Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française. Catch it if you can—should be worth it.]

<See here for more commentary on Suite Francaise.>

back to Bookshelf