It's kind of an out of body experience to read a French novel about German occupation in WWII that is so kind to the German soldiers. Written by a French person. A Jewish French person. Who died in the Holocaust. There is little to no mention of the Jewish persecution by the German army, and the German soldiers are portrayed as just naive young men, out for glory and doing their duty like any other soldier. It makes you wonder...I'm so used to seeing Nazi soldiers villified, how true is that? Were the everyday soldiers more good or evil than any other soldier? How aware were they of Hitler's real motives?You can tell the book wasn't finished, per se, but it's magnificant, haunting, thought provoking, and moreso because of the conditions under which it wasn't finished. ( )

Buying this book, you get two stories in one and both are well-worth reading. The main story is Nemirovsky´s unfinished novel about the German occupation of France, with her notes and plans. In itself, this is a gripping and captivating story that you don't want to put down. I was more taken by the story of the book, as this book was discovered forty years after the author´s deportation to Auschwitz, in a suitcase her daughter held on to during everything that happend to them, but did not open. It his mindblowing to think about.

In desperate situations, indeed in all situations, experience is an enfolding mix of things that are absurd, terrifying, funny, intriguing, compelling. How well Nemirovsky showed this mix in "Suite Francaise"! But then, situations so close to those in her own life will of course have the tone of authenticity. The wonder is that under terrible conditions she herself was able to see so much complexity.

This isn't just a work of historical fiction, this is a tragedy. The author's own tale is even more dramatic than that of her characters. Nemirovsky, of Jewish and Russian origin, wrote the two novellas of Suite Francaise while hiding with her family in the French countryside during World War II. She was then arrested, and a month later she was killed in Auschwitz. Her manuscripts were toted around by her very young daughters during the duration of the war, and were not published in France until a few years ago.

The novellas evoke what would have been current events for Nemirovsky. Storm in June follows several families of all social castes and attitudes as they flee Paris before the German invasion. The second novella, Dolce, focuses on the German occupation of a French village. The thing that struck me most was the author's fairness in dealing with these very real people. There is no propaganda here, or hatred against the Germans. If anything, her argument is that everyone is human, and that extraordinary circumstances bring out the worst in French and Germans alike. This is particularly moving considering how Nemirosky died.

The appendix and letters in the back detail the the author's writing method, her family history, and the desperate letters sent by her husband and publishers in trying to gain Nemirovsky's release. ( )

There’s something funny about animals in books. Some authors just mention random pets haphazardly, to be sure, but I’ve read a lot of books where the mention of the animal reoccurs and is symbolic of the main characters in some way, like Chanticleer and his two wives in the House of the Seven Gables. In Suite Française, there is the cat.

In the first part of Suite Française, Némirovsky describes the exodus of Parisians, all abandoning Paris in the wake of German air strikes of WWII. Several different groups of people are followed by the story. There’s the writer Corte and Florence, his mistress, the Michauds, the Péricands, and Charles Langelet. The cat belongs to the Péricands, an upper middle-class family. He is introduced almost as soon as we meet the Péricands as follows: “A cat held a little piece of bony fish tentatively between its sharp teeth. He was afraid to swallow it, but he couldn’t bring himself to spit it out either”. Immediately, we know that it’s not just about the cat; all of Paris is afraid to stay in the comforts of their homes, but couldn’t quite bring themselves to leave it either.

The adventures of the cat are followed. As Mme Péricand packs up her family – the baby, Jacqueline the little daughter, Hubert the clumsy teenage son, the rich, ailing, fussy father-in-law constantly threatening to leave his fortune to a charity that is most notable to Mme Péricand for not being herself and her husband – the cat is also remarked to be captured and stuffed into a travelling basket. While staying in makeshift lodging along the way to their place of refuge, the cat is noticed to have snuck away in the night, for some country fresh air and mice, by the little girl crying “Albert’s run away!” and “I want Albert! Find Albert for me! The Germans will take him! He’ll be bombed, stolen, killed! Albert! Albert! Albert!” It’s summarizes the entire outpouring of people from Paris with all the usual customs of civility completely abandoned and fear of the incoming invaders, doesn’t it? (Nope, no sarcasm. Seriously, it really does make you think of the panic of fleeing one’s home.)

Not to worry, just like the family being scuttled to and fro, the cat is fine and continued to be dragged along with his family; Némirovsky is very careful to give updates about the state of the cat. She has a later chapter devoted to Albert exploring the French village at night (but back in Jacqueline’s bed before morning, we are assured) and a line in the Péricands’ hasty departure from the village under air raid attacks which details that Jacqueline had managed to pack the cat, even as surprised as they had been, and towed him along in his basket.

This little attention to Albert the cat is part of why this book is so good! It covers great breadth in that it follows a great number of threads (just like the other book I love), but each with attention to detail and insightful observations, sometimes expressed through description of peripheral things. Like the cat.

The second part of the book, Dolce, is very aptly named. It is about a little French village, called Bussy, during the German occupation. A French woman falls gently and subtly in love with the German officer lodging in her absent husband’s house. The love story is told through events like shy evenings by the piano (the German, who is almost always referred to as just that “the German”, is a musician) and a passionate conversation as overheard by a little girl, often distracted and not catching every word. She’s pretty, her husband keeps a mistress in a separate household, and he is wide-eyed and handsome. “The officer smiled. ‘They think you’re Judith going to murder Holofernes in his tent.’” This is said as the pair walk along a street while on an errand to retrieve some items belonging to a family who had abandoned their house. It’s altogether ... beautifully written , subtle and lovely.

http://daysreading.blogspot.com/2009/... ( )