Suite Française

This is a work of fiction, set during the early days of World War II in France as the Maginot Line was falling and the French were coming to terms with the reality of a third war with Germany in as many generations. As the Germans marched toward Paris, those in the city decided whether to remain or head elsewhere in France and those in the Occupied Zone found themselves forced to house the conquerors beneath their own roofs. The characters existed in the notebooks of Irene Nemirovsky alone, but the story is as much non-fiction as fiction, for she wrote it as she and her family grappled with the reality of the war that had descended upon them.

Perhaps because it was written during the war, as events happened, and not from a distance with the benefit of hindsight - or even knowing how things would end - there is no fine line between collaboration and resistance, no acts of great heroism or cowardice. These people are simply trying to make it from one day to the next.

Nemirovsky was a Russian Jew; her family's fortune had been stripped during the Bolshevik Revolution and they'd been forced into exile in France; twenty years later this status left her pesona non grata in her adopted country and she wrote feverishly in an attempt to leave a record of what it meant to be a refugee and what it was to be amidst the confusion and loss of war. When she writes about "the reluctant tears of the very old who have finally accepted that sorrow is futile," the reader knows these words are the experience of a woman grown old before her time; likewise, when she muses on whether one will see the post-war life, it is clear she is speaking not only of her characters. In fact, Nemirovsky was arrested and deported to Auschwitz only weeks after writing in her notebook "...I do not lack the courage to complete the task / But the goal is far and time is short." What she was able to complete is still a remarkable book.