Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky - Review

Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky.

I have only just read Suite Francaise and I loved it.  I already had the book in my to be read pile when I happened across the Major Motion Picture adaptation.  I was at first a little skeptical of Michelle Williams playing the lead role, as I’d watched her for years on Dawson’s Creek and wasn’t sure she could pull of the part.  But she surprised me and her acting far surpassed what I had anticipated.  The chemistry between Michelle Williams and Matthias Schoenaerts was spot on, they portrayed their characters with feeling and believability. 

I couldn’t wait to read the written version, if it was half as good as the movie, I knew I wouldn’t be able to put it down.  I was right.  Suite Francaise was originally written in French by a talented writer - Irene Nemirovsky.  The English version of the book was translated by Sandra Smith, who has before worked with Nemirovsky’s work from French to English.  Sandra has done a fabulous job.

So onto the story…

War has broken out between Germany and France in 1940, the Germans are taking over any country they can.  Defeating France’s soldiers and occupying Paris, the cities, the towns, the villages.  One of the villages (Bussy) is where we meet Lucile Angellier.  A young woman, who married too young and not for love now spends her days rattling around in a village manor house with her cold and stern mother-in-law.  Her husband has been taken and is a prisoner of war, like so many other men from her village.  Though sadly she felt pity for him but nothing else, he wasn’t a good husband. 

It is not long before France admits defeat and the German soldiers roll into town.  The invading Nazi force fill the streets and the officers are sent to reside with the residents.  Lieutenant Bruno von Falk lands on the Angellier’s doorstep and they women of the house are forced to coexist under the same roof.

What Lucile did not expect was to feel something for this invader, this conqueror.  Underneath the green uniform, the soldier façade, was a man, a gentleman.  Bruno wasn’t at all the brutish, cold blooded killer she had envisioned stepping through into her hallway.  For three months Bruno and Lucile struggle with their emerging feelings and they too will feel the keen sting and tragedy of war.

Suite Francaise is as gripping as it is poignant.  Irene sets up the plot with first the invasion, the division of rich and poor at war time and the very unfair way the world worked in the 1940’s.  Irene Nemirovsky began writing Suite Francaise in secret in 1940, but her death in the concentration camp of Auschwitz saw the novel never finished.  The manuscript was discovered sixty-five years later by her daughter, in a suitcase, in the attic.  Suite Francaise became a masterpiece and is loved worldwide.  As it should be.

I highly recommend Suite Francaise, I couldn’t put it down even after I had seen the movie.  That doesn’t happen very often with adaptations.

Xx Kaylene

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