Books : Suite Francaise (French language edition) (French Edition)
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 843
EAN: 9782070336760
ISBN: 207033676X
Label: Denoel
Manufacturer: Denoel
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 573
Publication Date: January 31, 2005
Publisher: Denoel
Sales Rank: 331510
Studio: Denoel
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Suite Française is both a brilliant novel of wartime and an extraordinary historical document. An unmatched evocation of the exodus from Paris after the German invasion of 1940, and of life under the Nazi occupation, it was written by the esteemed French novelist Irène Némirovsky as events unfolded around her. This haunting masterpiece has been hailed by European critics as a War and Peace for the Second World War.
Though she conceived the book as a five-part work (based on the form of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony), Irène Némirovsky was able to write only the first two parts, Storm in June and Dolce, before she was arrested in July 1942. She died in Auschwitz the following month. The manuscript was saved by her young daughter Denise; it was only decades later that Denise learned that what she had imagined was her mother’s journal was in fact an invaluable work of art.
Storm in June takes place in the tumult of the evacuation from Paris in 1940, just before the arrival of the invading German army. It moves vividly between different levels of society–from the wealthy Péricand family, whose servants pack up their possessions for them, to a group of orphans from the 16th arrondissement escaping in a military truck. Némirovsky’s immense canvas includes deserting soldiers and terrified secretaries, cynical bank directors and hapless priests, egotistical writers and hardscrabble prostitutes–all thrown together in a chaotic attempt to escape the capital. Moving between them chapter by chapter, this thrilling novel describes a journey hampered and in some cases abandoned because of confusion, shelling, rumour, lack of supplies, bad luck and ordinary human weakness. Cars break down or are stolen; relatives are forgotten; friends are divided; but there are also moments of love and charity. Throughout, whether depicting saintly forbearance or the basest selfishness, Storm in June neither sweetens nor demonizes its characters; unsentimentally, with stunning perceptiveness, Némirovsky shows the complexities that mean no-one is simply a hero or villain.
The second volume, Dolce, is set in the German-occupied village of Bussy. Again, Némirovsky switches seamlessly between social strata, from tenant farmers to the local aristocracy. The focus, however, is on the delicate, secret love affair between a German soldier and the French woman in whose house he has been billeted; the passion, doubts and deceits of their burgeoning relationship echo the complex mixture of hostility and acceptance felt by the occupied community as a whole. Némirovsky is amazingly sensitive in her depiction of changing, often contradictory emotions, but her attention to the personal is matched by her sharp-eyed discussion of small-town life and the politics of occupation. In this myth-dissolving book, the French villagers see the Germans as oppressive warriors, but also as handsome young men, and occupation does nothing to remedy the condescension and envy that bedevil relations between rich and poor.
Quite apart from the astonishing story of its survival, Suite Française is a novel of genius and lasting artistic value. Subtle, often fiercely ironic, and deeply compassionate, it is both a piercing record of its time and a humane, profoundly moving novel.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
A remarkable, fluid, enthralling book about WWII written by a French Jew (who ended up being shipped off and killed in a concentration camp). It was published some 50 years posthumously. She paints a detailed portrait of the villagers when the Germans invade as well as the mass exodus from Paris. It is funny, sad and quite sympathetic at times toward some of the German soldiers. She seemed to be able to see the situation from all angles and get it down in exquisite prose.
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I have only one complaint. I understood there was some underlining in the book, but it was more than some, an awful lot and in ink so it was very disconcerting to read. It came in timely manner, and all else was fine.
Rating: -
Yes, it is obvious that it hasn't been edited but that doesn't detract from the beauty. Language is wound like ribbons, outlining the pictures of the characters, framing them and revealing them slowly.
The desperation, fear and transient nature of the characters fall off the page, revealing a landscape littered with the machinations of war. Characters come alive in mere fragments of sentences, the nature of war evident on every page, filling the reader with an intense feeling of dread and discomfort.
The writing is gifted, delicious and terrific. Not to be missed.
Rating:  -
I had heard such great things about this book, so was really looking forward to reading it. I read to chapter 22, then quit. I thought it was extremely boring and very slow moving. I agree with some of the other reviewers that the author's situation and the subsequent discovery of her manuscript was so intriguing, I expected the book to be the same, but I was very disappointed.
Rating:  -
Suite Francaise sat on my permanent "mountain" of waiting-to-be-read books for about a year, unopened. Had I only known...
The Holocaust claimed the lives of innumerable people. Irene Nemirovsky was among them. She died at Auschwitz a year after writing the first two novels (out of intended five) belonging to Suite Francaise. "Storm in June" and "Dolce" were re-discovered decades after she died and subsequently published, adding a further and unusual insight to the tragedy of war. The world lost a very talented writer, already successful and well known at the time of her death.
I think it is important however to discern the actual BOOK from the extraordinary CIRCUMSTANCES surrounding its discovery and the personal history of its author, as it would have been, in my opinion, a great literary success regardless. No doubt this is easier said than done, especially after turning the last page having read not only the book but all the following appendixes, which clarify the author's frame of mind and personal turmoil at the time of writing, as well as several points about the manuscripts that were still pending and awaiting a definite closure, a task possible only after the end of WW2, primary background of the entirety of Suite Francaise.
Having said this, the book itself is a standout. The first novel, "Storm in June" recounts the exodus from the city of Paris due to the advancing Nazi invasion. Different characters from different ... Read More
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