Suite Francaise

A Novel

By: Irene Nemirovsky

Narrated by: Daniel Oreskes, Barbara Rosenblat

Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Irene Nemirovsky was arrested soon after completing the second part of Suite Francaise. Ten days later, on August 17, 1942, she died of typhus in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her husband, Michel, perished in a gas chamber on November 6. Their daughters, Denise and Elizabeth, survived, hidden in safe houses and convents, carrying a suitcase packed with clothes, photographs, and their mother's manuscript written in tiny letters to save paper. For years, both girls thought it was a journal and couldn't bear to read it. Then, in the late 1980s, Denise began transcribing it with the help of a magnifying glass.

Part One, "A Storm in June", is set in the chaos and mayhem of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion. Part Two, "Dolce", opens in the provincial town of Bussy during the first influx of German soldiers. Each part features a rich cast of characters, people who never should have met, but come to form ambiguous relationships as they are forced to endure circumstances beyond their control.

Translated by Sandra Smith.

©2004 Editions DENOEL; 2006 Sandra Smith (P)2006 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

• Audie Award Finalist, Literary Fiction, 2007

"A finely made work of fiction that portrays occupied France with both severity and sympathy....Written with extraordinary detachment by a woman who seemed to know that her own days were numbered." (The New York Times)

Thought provoking but felt unfinished

This book is highly engaging, and very well written. The picture it paints of life during WW2 is unique and powerful. This book is intriguing and gripping, but at the end it felt unfinished. It felt as if the characters whom I'd come to care about, were left with their stories not completely told.

The best book I've read all year

What a wonderful writer -- and what a marvelous translation! I just loved these two connected novellas and have recommended them to all of my book-loving friends. They're beautifully read by narrators who have sense enough to inflect the story but ultimately to disappear. Just a lovely, lovely book, although there is additional material in the print edition that the recording ought to have included.

Nemirovsky's Letters

I enjoyed the reading of Suite Francaise but I think readers may be a bit disappointed to find that the personal correspondence letters of the author before she is taken away to the camps are not present in the audiobook version, though we hear about them in the introduction. I suppose it is because audiobooks don't usually contain appendices and that is where the letters are in the text version.

Beautiful and Poignant

These are beautifully written stories about the exodus of Paris when the Germans invaded France in 1940, and about village life during the German occupation. Richly detailed, full of irony and with much attention paid to the subtleties of class interactions during those turbulent times, they demonstrate the author's vast talent and the world's great loss when she died at the hands of the Nazis.

Unfortunately one of the readers, Rosenblat, disappoints. The emotions depicted by her vocal tones often conflict with those indicated by the text. Better to read the text in a normal voice than dramatize inaccurately. Allow us, the "readers", to interpret the text for ourselves.

Did not live up to my expectation

Would you try another book from Irene Nemirovsky and/or Daniel Oreskes and Barbara Rosenblat ?

Both narrators did a phenomenal job, but could not save the book.

Would you recommend Suite Francaise to your friends? Why or why not?

I would not recommend this book, as I could barely get through it myself. I was considering returning the book after about 1 hour of listening, as I could not keep track of too many characters, introduced too quickly. In fact, at the end of part one I still was confused about who was who. Frankly, I did not care deeply about anyone (I need to care about at least 1 character in order to enjoy a book). I do think the writer had a great potential and a great talent to describe human emotions, scenery, and almost imperceptible subtleties of human interactions. But, with so many characters, it was very difficult to keep up.

Was Suite Francaise worth the listening time?

Hard to say. The book definitely is a historical treasure, a first hand account of events. It peeked my interest in French history. However, enjoyment was minimal and frustration ran high.

Magnificent

I have read many books about war-time France, but never one like this one. To hear the story from one who lived it is an experience - which is what the book is. It is not war-time plots, spying or battle it is war-time living and the relationships that the people envolved develope with their own and with the enemy.

Not the meaningful book I anticipated

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Because of the story of its writing and discovery, I had anticipated a novel of real significance. Instead, it was a somewhat interesting read about the emptying out of Paris when the Germans first arrived during WWII.

Suite Francaise

This book contains 2 stories that were planned as a 5 part novel. The author was murdered at Auschwitch in 1942. Unfortunatly this "unabridged" version does not include the important forward and appendices that outline the author's plans for the complete novel, nor does it tell about her life. I had to buy the book to get the extra 70 pages

We Will Never Know Where We Would Have Been Taken

Suite Fraisncae, written by Irene Nemirovsky, and narrated by Daniel Oreskes, and Barbara Rosenblat. This novel is a two-part display of the horror that befell the French, when the Germans conquered the French nation at the beginning of World War II. It also is a parade of human personalities. It was to be a five-part compendium of the War from its initial days to Allied victory and the nature of Europe’s rehabilitation after the war. Its tragedy, is not necessarily in its story, but what befalls its author. Ms. Nemirovsky is a Jew, and, for that simple reason, she did not survive the war to write the last three parts. There is more serendipity here. Her daughters did survive the war, but labored at her lose and could not read her work for 50 years, as they believed it would cause them too much pain. In the late 1990s they finally opened the pages and found their mother was as good a writer John Steinbeck in telling of an epoch human tragedy. So, belatedly, the books were published.

The books are a display of Existentialism. At one point (in the second book) Nemirovsky pits a forlorn German officer against the angst of a French woman. The German, had made a mistake in his prewar life, in entering a young marriage with a woman he learned, he had no interest in. Further the German soldier is dismayed that being at war, that war, has taken from him the opportunity to become a great musician. He cannot practice and advance in his career. His companion, the French woman finds herself destitute, and locked into a marriage to a husband that does not love her, has a mistress that he does love and treats her, the wife, badly. With that setting we find ourselves overhearing a conversation between the German man and the French woman where the German officer talks about the beauty of the Germans functioning as a beehive, and the French woman thinks of the disgust that she feels against such overwhelming societal control. Each providing a perfect display of disorientation, confusion, and dread in the face of an apparently absurd presence in relation to each other’s situation.

The first of the books begins with the impending takeover of Paris by the Nazi forces. We see the people begin to flee Paris. Then mass escape, its panic, its horrors and reduction in status of everyone’s human condition. We come to learn of the misinterpretations and misunderstandings of the true situation – being an invaded nation. During the panicked flee we see heroes destroyed by unappreciative, cowards are rewarded for their debauchery and fools are admired for their cunning.

The second book is the story of young German men surrounded by young French woman. Their mutual repelling disgust and mutual attracting pheromones. Subtly, you learn, by hearing the townspeople’s thinking, of the collaborators rational for assisting the Germans, the thoughts of those who will likely become the resistance and of the freight that seeps into the towns people’s mind at the atrocities the Germans, could commit, had committed in local towns, and to everyone’s expectation that would be committed in their own town.
Ms. Nemirovsky, tells a story as well as any great writer, such as Steinbeck, who she reminds me of, does not have the same ability to develop an attachment to her characters equal to Steinbeck’s ability. Do not let that deter you from reading this work though. It is stunningly good. Her writing charm is the soft telling of stories and subtle suggestions of the wrongs in the existence of life. Ms. Nemirovsky puts us right into the Nazi system of irrationality. She makes us experience one more crime in the history of man.

We are truly the losers – being denied Nemirovsky and her would-have-been later works. The fact this is not her full teachings is no reason to pass up the brilliance of her works created contemporaneously with the actual taking of France by the Nazis.
Just one more sadness. At the end of book two, Ms. Nemirovsky, sets the state for participants in book two, to have reason to go to Paris and contact persons from book one in Paris. We will never know where that would have taken us. . .

A Treasure/ An Enchanting Story of Another Time

Set in a very difficult time, the German occupation of France in 1940, the author nevertheless finds such moments of beauty, love & redemption that her words enchant like sunlight on polished crystal or delicate birdsong wafting through an open window on a summer breeze. She creates surprising scenes and characters of such depth & complexity that they seem real and taking breaks from listening is like being separated from a loved one. I didn't want to stop.
The day to day scenes of village life, farm life and life in Paris are so vivid that they truly come to life and seem more like memories than the words of a book.
There have been so many stories about this period of human history, but Nemirovsky finds a completely different perspective by looking candidly through the eyes and hearts of the people who lived through them. So she takes us on a fresh journey of the human heart and a wonderful journey it is.
I feel so sad that Nemirovsky didn't get to complete the 4 or 5 novels she intended for this "suite".
I would have LOVED to read them ALL!
These audio versions are very well performed and I enjoyed every word!