Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky

This is the incomplete book written by Ms Nemirovsky. She had left Soviet Russia after the revolution as a 'white Russian' taking refuge in Paris. Before she could finish the book she was interned as a stateless/former Soviet citizen and a Jewess taken to camp then transferred to

Auschwitz where she died shortly after. Her husband suffered a similar fate, but their children as they were born in France and became French citizens survived. This is important background information when reading this novel, as it colours and overshadows the plot.

This book consists of two substantial parts plus the outlines and notes for a further two or three sections. The first part follows several characters, residents of Paris, as they deal with the arrival of the German Army and the fall of Paris. It illustrates how close a supposedly civilised country is to anarchy and disintegration. The second section follows a few of the characters as they live through the early months of the German Occupation of a rural community. It describes how easily people become collaborators to some degree or other once they come to know, and accept individual Germans. Others try to resist with whatever means they have at their disposal.

Certainly this writing would have been more polished before publication had Irene lived, and some things may have been lost in translation, but even in its' present existence this is a worthy volume, though provoking and good on descriptions and characterisations. It still can't be denied though, that Irene's fate overshadows the book, and tinges any reader's feeling towards it. Rating 7/10