Although
Suite
Française was
not published until 2004, it was actually written in 1940/1941, which
makes it, like the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves,
extremely valuable. While many other novels based on the horror
of World War II have been written in
the years after the war, either as memoirs by people who experienced
it or after extensive research by people who did not, Irène
Némirovsky wrote
Suite
Française
while
the war was raging around her. It was intended as a suite of five
novels – she only managed the first two before she was arrested for
her Jewish connections (even though she and her family were Catholics)
and was taken to Auschwitz
where
she perished.
She
did leave some notes on how she was intending to write the remaining
three novels; however, while the notes for book three are fairly
detailed, the notes for books four and five are extremely
sketchy. The first of
the two books,
Storm
in June,
was most probably edited at
some stage by
Némirovsky,
whereas
the second book, Dolce,
reads in many parts as a first draft. Given
Némirovsky's
situation, it is more than likely that she did not have the time to
edit
her second book.
While
I do not agree with those who hail Irène
Némirovsky as
France's greatest author, I feel that her Suite
Française
is
a valuable portrait of a time most of us living
today have only read about. The characters in Storm
in June,
though occasionally bordering on caricatures,
are well described. Her powers of observation are amazing, and
parallel to the tragedy of France's invasion and occupation there is
a lot of humour: at no point does her writing become sentimental or
maudlin.
Although
the
relationship between the French woman Lucile
and the
German
officer
Bruno
(in
Dolce)
never really makes lift-off, it is obvious from the notes she left
that Némirovsky
had
thought to develop their story (and their relationship) in the
successive books.
When
Bruno
says
to
Lucile “Ah! Madame, this is the principal problem of our times:
what is more important, the individual or society? War is the
collaborative act par excellence, is it not?… “, he
is perhaps summing up one of main themes in
Suite
Française –
a
story about a tragedy, which became a tragedy in itself.
In 2015, Suite
Française was made into a film by Saul Dibb. The photo above (from the film) is from www.tf1international.com
