before reviewing the book I have to introduce it and it’s author. Suite française is the title of a planned sequence of five novels by Irène Némirovsky, a French writer of Ukrainian Jewish origin. In July 1942, having just completed the first two of the series, Némirovsky was arrested as a Jew and detained at Auschwitz, where she was sent to the gas chambers by the Nazi regime. The notebook containing the two novels was preserved by her daughters but not examined until 1998. They were published in a single volume entitled Suite française in 2004.
The first novel, Tempête en juin “Storm in June” depicts the flight of citizens from Paris in the hours preceding the German advance and in the days following it. I personally didn’t like this part of the book very much but there was something in it that kept me reading. It featured the stories of families fleeing Paris, therefore it was a bit confusing with its many characters (those many characters weren’t randomly added, the author planned on writing five novels where she introduced all the characters in the first).
The second, Dolce “Sweet”, shows life in a small French country town, in the first, strangely peaceful, months of the German occupation. As for that part it was what made the book worth reading.
I couldn’t put the book done specially after I started the 2nd novel, it teleports you to a French village during German occupation, and what makes it so realistic is that the author lived that war. At the end of the book you will find an appendix of Irène’s notes during that war and while writing the book, it has a lot of ideas that she held for the 3 remain unwritten novels.
Sounds like an interesting read. I’ll check it out.. Thanks Sara!
it is an interesting read. Loved the fact the she didn’t have the chance to finish the book however you can read in her notes the ideas she had, she was thinking “writtingly” in her notes, she wanted the war to end so she can see where will her characters end up.