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Title: Suite Francaise
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Manufacturer: Vintage
List Price: $14.95
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Suite Francaise by Vintage rather pull neddles out of myself (kimberly bowling) (ohio usa) | | i didnt even finish this book even though despite my best efforts. to many characters to keep track of. and just not enough depth to keep it interesting. i was deeply disapointed. | | Suite Francaise by Vintage Literary styles change | | I'll make this short. As far as fiction is concerned, this book is the equivalent of an historic photograph. It is in black and white rather than in color (Steven Spielburg wasn't the first to see WWII as dark...)and much of its beauty lies in the fact that it is a clear voice from another time and place. A treasure, maybe more crudely carved than finely crafted, but we are lucky to have had it survive. So real. | | Suite Francaise by Vintage Vaguely Interesting Yet Rarely Engaging | Recognizing beforehand that this wouldn't be a complete story arc (as the author died in one of the Holocaust camps), I had to try to approach the book without any prejudice toward it for having a weak ending (i.e., no ending). Unfinished books can be interesting to read to view the storytelling process in the midst of its evolution, but are rarely satisfying as stories in their own right. Némirovsky's work here is perhaps more polished than a simple draft, but even her notes suggest that the finished chapters and two volumes that were published are not necessarily how they would appear in her final product.
So then, what about what we are given?
It's, well, pretty good. It's not riveting by any means. There is no climax to her first act ("Storm in June") and her second act plays out pretty softly (appropriately enough for a section entitled "Dolce"). While each segment picks up interest in later chapters, both start off at such a slowburn that many readers won't make it past a hundred pages. Character-wise, Némirovsky doesn't provide the reader with many sympathetic characters either. Not only are almost all the inhabitants of her story arrogant hypocrites, but they are almost universally uninteresting as well.
The first book is a pile of vignettes describing the circumstances of several families and individuals as they flee Paris on the eve of its fall into German hands on 14 June 1940. The narrative is as disorganized and haphazard, perhaps, as was the exodus it chronicles. There are flourishes of course and moments of interest (notably a chapter written from the perspective of a cat in heat), but on the whole it functions better as documentary than as story. The second book is easily superior, but much slower paced. There are more sympathetic characters and much more time for introspection. In a way, book two ("Dolce") could function as some sort of Jane Austen work, only with Nazis and junk.
Back to characters. Reading, Suite Française, I first thought that Némirovsky was an out-and-out misanthrope, despising all humanity, no matter its form or station. Gradually, I came to see that there is a certain class of person whom Némirovsky bears little ill will and seems to believe at least capable of being both genuine and rational. Those people seem to fit in the lower middle class and be young enough to still see beauty in the world (the Michaud couple are only in their early forties or so, and are an exception to the youthfulness qualification). Her sympathetic characters are the Michauds, Jean-Marie Michaud, Lucile, the young engaged couple fleeing from Paris on their wedding day, Bruno (the German soldier staying with Lucille's family), Madeleine (to some extent), and Hubert (after he rejects the hypocrisy and privilege of his class).
I should note I really did appreciate Némirovsky's ability to describe the hypocrisies of her characters through the various perspectives of her other characters. This actually makes it a little more difficult to pin down the author's own feelings toward others.
I'd be curious to read Némirovsky's other works to see how she paints the classes as a general rule, but if they're not more interesting books than Suite Française, I think I'll skip. | | Suite Francaise by Vintage Suite Francaise: A Collage | Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky blurs well defined categories of genre and presents real life in a creative collage. The unfinished work consists of two novellas and two appendixes. The manuscript had been kept by Nemirovsky's daughter who had refused to read it for years, because her mother had died in Auschwitz, and the daughter didn't want to revisit the painful memories.
The first novella, "Storm in June," narrates the evacuation from Paris of multiple families fleeing the Germans in 1940. Nemirovsky uses the Olympian eye to see the large picture while combining multiple tales simultaneously. She follows the Pericand family, the Cortez couple, the Michauds and their son Jean-Marie as they pack and prepare to depart for safer climes. Petty preoccupations and emotional ties are explored as each family leaves the city. With the eye of a cinematographer and the insight of a psychologist as Nemirovsky delves into the lives of her characters. Each story deals with life and death decisions superimposed on mundane needs and egocentric vanities.
The second novella, "Dolce" deals with German occupation in France. Nemirovsky shows war in real time. Not every minute is horrible. Seen primarily through the eyes of the French, the Germans are sometimes perceived as human; and the French are sometimes inhumane. People are people and hatred and combat are not the only experience in wartime.
Both novellas follow a linear movement toward conflict and death, a straight line toward the unknown. Is this not what life is about, Nemirovsky asks? But she deftly includes another movement. Underneath the linear progress is a comforting cyclical movement, nature's cycles, repetitious twenty-four hour days, the pattern of seasons, the biological mating instinct--all ordinary patterns continuing in spite of war.
The appendixes consist of the Nemirovsky's notes on her work in progress allowing the reader to get inside the mind of the writer. She asks: "Which of the scenes deserve to be passed on to posterity?" (p.374). She struggles with objectivity: "My idea is for it to unravel like a film, but at times the temptation is great, and I've given in with brief descriptions or in the episode that follows the meeting at the schoolboy giving my own point of view. Should I mercilessly pursue this?" (p. 376).
Nemirovsky writes while fleeing Paris. All lives are upset; all priorities must be reassessed. Suite Francaise, a Novel stands alone as art without tapping the biography of the author, but once the reader understands circumstances of Nemirovsky's writing, which is that she is writing fiction about events she is experiencing in real time, immediacy and poignancy is added to this work. In Nemirovsky's own story, which is not a part of this novel, she dies in Auschwitz. Her journal entries tell the reader she understands she may die. Her tragic end prevented the completion of the work as she had envisioned it. Reading the uncompleted novellas with the appendixes make the total work a revealing story of Irene Nemirovsky's life told with consciousness that moves the story beyond individual experience to the universal experience of war. Genres merge. Is this fiction, autobiography, memoir, documentary? The collection of texts in this work creates a new genre, a collage, a scrapbook of life. It is real, it is human, and it makes us understand more about the human condition.
| | Suite Francaise by Vintage A fascinating and touching book | I finished reading "Suite Francaise", a thoroughly absorbing book. How I would like to write like Neimerovsky! Usually I want to plow through description and flowery words and get to the plot. I think that is the male way. In this book, however, the descriptions are more than dressing; they are part of the meaning and must be read. They also add to the beauty of the prose and take you to the far away place the author wants you to go. Once there, she allows the plot and dialogue to flow. The dialogue is sparse, but even so great meaning is extracted from the characters.
Our civilization is built upon such flimsy foundations. The beauty we revere in art and happiness from possessions are jettisoned once one is hungry and without shelter. Our motives become baser as our survival needs go unmet. Those who want the least, like the priest, tend to be the happiest and can make do. As civilization crumbles, we learn that skills as a poet, banker, or artist become worthless. The man that can grow food, raise horses fares better. Women live by their wits, using looks to survive; an age old option justified for self preservation.
In "Suite", security is paramount. It's once one takes for granted or is completely secure in his basic needs can he move on to gratifying other wants: love, ambition, material possessions.
The most despicable people in the novel are those who feel entitled to their perch and do not realize that they are flabby pink shallow beasts surviving on a largesse they did not earn. These people inherited their wealth or gained it in endeavours that mean little in the new world of occupation.
The saddest characters are those that have passion, but no one to love. Lucille and Bruno, you really feel for them. | | Suite Francaise by Vintage Product Description | Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940. Suite Française tells the remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. As Parisians flee the city, human folly surfaces in every imaginable way: a wealthy mother searches for sweets in a town without food; a couple is terrified at the thought of losing their jobs, even as their world begins to fall apart. Moving on to a provincial village now occupied by German soldiers, the locals must learn to coexist with the enemy—in their town, their homes, even in their hearts.
When Irène Némirovsky began working on Suite Française, she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For sixty-four years, this novel remained hidden and unknown. |
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