Suite française by Irène Némirovsky
How and where to begin a review of this book…so much to say. An indication of the immensity of the problem for a review is possibly best indicated by what Wikipedia started out with..
In the course of her life she learned to speak 7 different languages.Irène Némirovsky 1903 – 1942
Suite française (French pronunciation: [sɥit fʁɑ̃sɛːz]; 'French Suite') is the title of a planned sequence of five novels by Irène Némirovsky, a French writer of Ukrainian-Jewish origin. In July 1942, having just completed the first two of the series, Némirovsky was arrested as a Jew and detained at Pithiviers and then Auschwitz, where she was murdered, a victim of the Holocaust. The notebook containing the two novels was preserved by her daughters but not examined until 1998. They were published in a single volume entitled Suite française in 2004.
She was a novelist of Ukrainian Jewish origin who was born in Kiev, Ukraine under the Russian Empire. She lived more than half her life in France, and wrote in French, but was denied French citizenship. Arrested as a Jew under the racial laws – which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism – she died at Auschwitz at the age of 39.
The two novels in Suite française are entitled - Tempête en juin and Dolce. The first book of which focuses on the exodus of Parisians and others from Paris fleeing south to avoid the German advance in 1940 and the second book Dolce covering the occupation by German troops and what it was like for both sides.
Tempête en juin dealing with the exodus from Paris actually covers a major event in French history, viz. the exodus from Paris that I never knew about. It was a major event in 20th century French history and I have never read about it. Némirovsky evokes the upheaval in vivid detail and in doing so sets up for what follows in Dolce and life under Vichy and occupation.
I have stayed away from this book since its publication because I heard how heavy duty and oppressive it was. However my reading of the book found it anything but. It is not a melancholy or depressing book. It is interesting, multilayered, and vivid at every turn. By vivid I mean the author was writing about life as it was happening all around her during this time.
I would give it a 9/10 and suggest it is best suited for a C1, C2 reader.
I also look forward to reading this book again in another year, at which time I am sure I will gain even more from it.
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Some political observations that people may possibly find of interest.
The book dealt with the quality and texture of life before and during occupation. It is fascinating to see how people saw things at that time and what has been left out of the history books. My fascination with the Vichy govt. 1940-44 just increases with time.
I have to date read the following books dealing with Vichy:
- -L'Étrange Défaite Marc Bloch
-Le régime de Vichy Henry Rousso
-Le syndrome De Vichy, de 1944 a Nos Jours Henry Rousso
-Au bon beurre Jean Dutourd (fiction)
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky just increases my fascination with that time.
Those Vichy years were a time when Populism ruled in both Germany with Hitler and in France with Marshal Pétain
The Populism of France of those years was as if out of the textbook and could be characterized by:
- -strong authoritarian and charismatic leader
-strong populist fervor
-xenophobia
-extreme Right supremacist ideology
-extreme nationalism
-authority comes from top down rather than bottom up
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For additional resources on the French exodus see:
1940 L'exode de juin 40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkhnLJegnMw