Title: Suite Française
Author: Irène Némirovsky
Genre: Historical Fiction.
Publication Date: August 4th 2011 (Originally published 2004)
Publisher: Vintage
Format: Paperback
Pages: 416
Rating: 5/5
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Before reading Suite Française, I knew next to nothing about
it. I’d seen the trailer more than a couple of times, but that is only half of
the novel. I feel like this isn’t talked about nearly as much as it deserves to
be.
Suite Française was going to be a five part novel that would
explore life in France following June 1940 and the German invasion.
Unfortunately, only two parts were completed at the time of Irène Némirovsky's
death in August 1942 in Auschwitz. Irène s daughter held onto the manuscript
for 50 years, believing it to be a personal diary of her mother’s before it was
finally published in 2004.
The first part, Storm in June, looks into the world of
various families and individuals as they flee Paris as the German armies
advance. Each story is different, despite them all being intertwined in some
way. It wasn’t my favourite part because there were very few characters I
actually cared for (I believe this was done on purpose).
I absolutely adore WWII novels, so this probably comes as no
surprise to any of you that this is a new favourite. The main reason for that
is the writing — from the very first page, I was completely in love with the
writing — it is absolutely heartbreaking, even in describing the simplest
things. I’d already teared up about five times by the end of that first part.
The second part is what did it for me. Dolce focuses on the
one little French village called Bussy, which has been occupied by German
soldiers. These German soldiers live in with the town people, many of whom have
husbands and sons and lovers being held as prisoners of war — you can imagine
the tension. The story focuses on a few different women, my favourite of which
was Lucile who is living with her mother in law and her husband is one of the
captured men. One of the German officers, Bruno, moves into their home and the
story goes from there.
The thing is, Bruno is not portrayed as the typical brute,
unfeeling German solider. He wanted to be a musician before the war, and he
goes out of his way to be kind to Lucile and her mother in law. You can imagine
the feels that resulted from that.
For whatever reason, I started part two before bed, which
was possibly the stupidest idea I ever had. I literally had to pull myself away
from the book so that I could actually get some sleep but I spent the entire
night thinking about the book. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that strongly
about a book, even in my dreams I wanted to pick up the book.
Like most unfinished books, when I got to the end I just
stared at the final pages for a while in disbelief. No, it couldn’t end there.
Luckily, in my edition, they’ve included notes that Némirovsky made so you
could see where she was planning to go with the other three novellas. Oh god,
you don’t understand how much I wish she’d lived long enough to write them.
Again, luckily, this isn’t her only novel — and yes, I have already added all
the others to my wishlist on the Book Depository.
Now, if you excuse me I’m going to go back to crying about
this book in my University café.
