It’s hard to say how much of my emotion over this remarkable novel was provoked by the tragic, extraordinary ‘story behind the story.’ Irene Nemirovsky, born a Russian Jew, was an internationally-recognized novelist who lived most of her adult life in Paris. She started writing Suite Francaise at the beginning of World War II, envisioning an epic in five parts about events that were unfolding in occupied France. Nemirovsky completed the first two parts before she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where she died. Her two daughters held onto the handwritten manuscript for 64 years before one of them transcribed it, and Suite Francaise was published in 2006 to great acclaim.
And rightly so. Suite Francaise is engrossing, with simple, real characters, precious details, and fast-moving action. The first part “Tempete en juin” (“Storm in June”) deals with the mass exodus of Paris in June 1940 and follows an array of characters as they flee the city amid the chaos and fear. Yet there’s an unmistakable absurdist comedy to it all, and more than once I laughed aloud at the famous novelist who is briefly separated from his car and servants, or the middle-class family who packs their linens and silverware as if preparing for a summertime trip to the countryside.
The second part “Dolce” (“Sweet”) focuses on a village called Bussy and the surrounding farms where some of these characters reside. The tone is more serious; day-to-day life during the German occupation is vividly depicted (Nemirovsky spent the last year of her life in similar environs). The nuanced interaction between the French citizens and the German soldiers is fascinating; there are collaborators, resistors, but most prevalently, sympathizers.
The storyline in “Dolce” revolves around Lucile, the pretty wife of a French PoW in Germany. She sort of falls in love with the German commander who is billeted at the house that Lucile shares with her severe mother-in-law. When Lucile and her German’s relationship becomes physical, “she felt nothing, nothing but the cold buckle of his uniform pressing against her chest… He was whispering to her in German. Foreigner! Foreigner! Enemy, in spite of everything.” This relationship, while schmaltzy, depicts the ambivalence that the French have for their occupiers. With their young men gone, the French make the German soldiers surrogate fathers, husbands, and sons, but only on the surface.
My heart broke when I came to the end of the second part, because the story is unfinished, and because the story is unfinished.
