SUITE FRANCAISE

Well, I finally finished SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky. It was a little tough to get into but I ended up enjoying it. This book contains the first two parts of what was meant to have been a five part series. Tragically, the author died at Auschwitz before completing her work. The book reminded me of ANNA KARENINA in its style. It has so many characters that it was sometimes difficult to follow but, after a while, you become utterly engrossed in their stories. Nemirovsky seems to have contempt for many of her characters. It is as if she wished to expose the greed, fear and selfishness of many people during the war. There were only a small handful of sympathetic characters in the whole book. It is so frustrating to be without the final three parts because it would have been interesting to see how the book developed. The first two parts end on a note of near hopefulness in mid-1941. I think the finished product would have been a mighty work indeed. Unfortunately, we must make do with the two parts that we have.