Introducing February's Book of the Month: Suite Francaise

It’s February first so that means it’s time to introduce our book of the month. This is our first selection, chosen by me, however I would like your input for future selections. Please feel free to e-mail me at bexadler AT yahoo DOT com with any suggestions you may have. Or, of course, you can leave them on the comment board. Also, if you could let me know you plan on reading the book in the comments below, that would be fab.

OK then, on to the book:

Somehow from the reviews I read, I got the idea that Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise was autobiographical. Somehow I thought it was her journals discovered 65 years after her death and put into print. But after reading the inside cover I discovered that it was actually a novel based on real events. We’ll never know how she intended it to end though because Nemirovsky only wrote the first two parts of the book before she was shipped to Auschwitz, where she later died.

Here is the information from the inside cover of the book:

“In 1941, Irene Nemirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was lving through by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. Nemirovsky’s death in Auschwitz in 1942 prevented her from seeing the day, sixty-five years later, that the existing two sections of her planned novel sequence, Suite Francaise, would be rediscovered and hailed as a masterpiece.

Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis, Suite Francaise falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation. Suite Francaise is a novel that teems with wonderful characters struggling with the new regime. However, amidst the mess of defeat, and all the hypocrisy and compromise, there is hope. True nobility and love exist, but often in surprising places.”

I hope you’re all as excited about this book as I am. And, as I said above, please feel free to send suggestions for future book of the month selections.