Title: Suite Francaise
Author: Irene Nemirovsky
The story of the publication of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise is almost as interesting as the novel itself. Nemirovsky was a Russian Jew who escaped her home country during the revolution. She moved to France, where she attended the Sorbonne, married, had children, and started a celebrated writing career. When it looked like war was on the horizon, she and her children converted to Catholicism and moved to the French countryside to hide out from the Nazis. While in hiding, she wrote the first three suites of what was to be a novel of five suites. Shortly after the war began, she was captured and killed at Auschwitz. Fortunately for all of us, the manuscript of her novel was preserved with one of her daughters, and it was just recently discovered and published.
Suite Francaise brings together a large cast of characters, from all walks of life, who experience life and death during World War II. At first, the stories seem relatively disconnected, but over time the characters come into contact with each other (think Crash). I love novels written in this time period, and Nemirovsky's work is reminsicent of the best of Fitzgerald or Hemingway. I found myself absorbed in the stories, especially that of the third suite. It's just too sad that Nemirovsky wasn't able to finish the novel-- or her life. Her husband was killed by the Nazis too and the girls were raised in a Catholic orphanage. It's a life story befitting the lives Nemirovsky portrays in Suite Francaise.
--originally published 2/21/07
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