Recently I mentioned that I received a copy of the first part of Irène Némirovsky’s novel Suite Française, as part of Knopf’s "First Reads" program. Here’s a brief review.
Suite Française is a remarkable novel -- remarkable not only in content, but in how it came to be written, and eventually, published. Irène Némirovsky wrote Suite Française just prior to leaving Paris, as the Nazi’s advanced into France in 1940. Némirovsky intended Suite Française to be a five-part novel. She was able to complete the first two parts ("Storm in June" and "Dolce") before being arrested by the Nazi’s and then dying of typhus at Auschwitz. The manuscript survived, was finally published in France in 2004, and is now being published (in English translation) by Knopf in the United States.
"Storm in June" tells the story of a number of families fleeing Paris at the same time Némirovsky did. Each of the families deals with the threat of the approaching Germans in various ways, and copes with their situation that tells us as much about themselves as their circumstances.
A wealthy porcelain collector worries more about maintaining his social status than about what’s happening all around him. A couple employed at a bank suffer not only the tyranny of their employer but the pain of not knowing whether their son is still alive. The most touching character is 16-year-old Hubert who sneaks away from his family and hopes to join the French troops in fighting the Germans.
Némirovsky renders all of these characters with care. Her writing is clear, and crisp, and heartbreaking as you contrast Irène Némirovsky’s real-life story with those in Suite Française.