My First Thoughts

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky is a novel that paints a picture of French life during the early 1940's. While only at the quarter-way mark, I find Suite Francaise a difficult novel to review. On one hand, I would like to give the novel high reviews considering the appreciation I hold for the novel because of its historical importance. It provides an intimate look into the German invasion of Paris during the Second World War and is very well written. Creating just the right atmosphere through her work, Nemirovsky connects the reader with the emotions and fear felt by the innocent civilians of France. I, personally, learned a lot in such a short period of time about life in France during the early 1940's.

My appreciation for Suite Francaise also stems from the story behind the compilation of the novel. It is the story of the author and the tale behind how the novel came to be published so many years after her death that seems more compelling to me than the actual plot itself. However, I believe if Nemirovsky had a chance to complete the book to the extent she hoped to, I would think otherwise.

On the other hand, the plot line of this novel is slow and and seems to crawl along sluggishly. When I first began to read the book, I had trouble reading it more than a chapter or two at a time. While it was written with great style and beauty, it did not grab my attention or engross me in a way that kept me reading. I soon learned that each chapter was an episode into the lives of certain characters, who fluctuated from chapter to chapter. While many of these episodes were interesting and amusing, there was no push to keep on reading.

However, only 100 pages in, it is possible the coming chapters of the novel may change this.