Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
"She remembered the defeated soldiers of the French army who a year before had fled through the town, dirty, exhausted, dragging their combat boots in the dust. Oh, my God, so this is war... An enemy soldier never seemed to be alone-- one human being like any other-- but followed, crushed from all directions by innumerable ghosts, the missing and the dead. Speaking to him wasn't like speaking to a solitary man, but to an invisible multitude..."
"Suite" refers to an ordered set of orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert rather than as accompaniment. Nemirovsky planned to write a five-piece novel, but only finished the first two parts before she was detained in a concentration camp and killed. Previous to her death she was a successful writer in Paris. Her daughters kept her notebooks but they weren't read until 1998.
This novel starts on the evening of the German occupation of Paris and follows a series of people whose lives intertwine. The first part ("Storm in June") is about the people leaving the city and coming back, and the second book ("Dolce") is about the German occupation of a small town.
Things I Liked: I got into this book almost right away. It's short (okay, 367 pages but it felt short), quick, and offers a view of WWII that is very relatable in a way that stories about concentration camps are not for me. The terror and horror of a concentration camp-- the threat of being found (like The Diary of Anne Frank) or living in one (like a play I was in during college-- Playing for Time) is so blindingly scary, it's hard for me not to turn off immediately and not allow myself to be emotionally involved in the stories (additionally, I've been told more than once [and I am not kidding here] that I have a perfect Aryan face and would have survived the holocaust). But I can relate to this book. I can imagine myself fleeing from bombs, and while the characters were choosing which possessions to bring with them as they fled, I mentally listed the things that I, also, could not leave without (Josh, cats, pictures, maybe my good china).
Things I Didn't Like: There are a lot of characters in this book. A lot. Some of them make multiple appearances, some of them are only meaningful for a couple of pages. I did a lot of flipping back to try to remember who did what and where (there's a particularly bad guy who I kept confusing with a different, similarly bad guy). The second part pretty much stays on the same people, though, and was a much more engaging read.
I also didn't like that the book is unfinished, but I guess I can blame the Nazis for that.
This Book Would be Best if Read: During a long car ride (if you don't get carsick), on a beach, before bed. The chapters are short, though if you take too long to read it you might forget some of the characters who make reappearances.
I Would Recommend this Book to: Anyone and everyone. I'm not sure how stereotypically "manly" it is, but there are plenty of soldiers, lots of action, and more than half the characters are male. There are a few "kind of" love stories that are slightly sappy, but it takes place during WWII, so you know there won't be a happy ending.
If You Liked This Book, You Might Also Like: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, the movie Swing Kids (yeah, I'm recommending it).
I'm 11 down, with 19 and a little more than 6 months to go. Unfortunately, I've been sneaking in some books for pleasure, as well as dissertation articles and textbooks, so it's been going a lot slower than I thought it would.
