Suite Française

I finished reading Suite Française, having seen all the reviews saying what a wonderful book, a masterpiece etc etc. It was certrainly thought provoking but I suspect I am alone in being disappointed in finding it was not great literature. Good, but not great. As far as I am concerned, the reason it is an exceptional book is how and when it was written rather than the substance.

What makes it fascinating and something not to be missed is the fact that it is a picture of World War II from a point of view we rarely witness, occupied France, and it was written while the story was unfolding. I think it is the small detail which brings the book to life and this would have been fresh in the mind of Irène Némirovski. It feels vivid and immediate. It gives a new perspective of what it would be like to live in an occupied country, something I don’t think I really properly considered before.

The first section “Storm in June” I found a little difficult to follow with so many different characters and several different points of view, but it seemed in a way to be a reflection of the chaos of war, the turmoil surrounding the flight from Paris. It seemed we didn’t really get to know the characters very well but they were well drawn. You need also to read the Appendices to realise the full potential of the book, and where it was going. It was intended to be a five part work. Of course if the following volumes had been written as intended no doubt the characters would have become fuller. The least pleasant of them seemed to be best equipped for survival (débrouillard I suppose). The second section “Dolce” is much quieter, more peaceful and the characters seem pleasanter. One of the reviewers, from The Independent, thinks the first part better than the second. I’m not sure. I don’t know whether it was better or not, but I preferred the second part, possibly because it was easier to empathise with the characters.

Collaboration has always been portrayed as something to despise and yet here we see that the occupiers are people too. You can relate to people on a personal level and forget they are occupying forces. In my mind I need to redefine collaboration with occupying forces. It is one thing to relate on a personal level and quite another to sympathise with their ideologies. It brings to mind when I was on an exchange visit with an Austrian family. They were lovely people but when the father, who had been a doctor during the war, did mention the war, and said “Of course I think we were a little bit right and you will think you were a little bit right”, I was horrified.

It would be interesting to read a few other books of the same period eg
Rosemary Sullivan - VILLA AIR-BEL: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille.
Richard Vinen - The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation.
Charles Rearick - The French in Love and War: Popular Culture in France, 1914-1945 (Hardcover).
Possibly also Christopher Lloyd - Collaboration and Resistance in Occupied France: Representing Treason and Sacrifice , though this is an academic book and very expensive

Just arrived

It really, really annoys me when sites assume they know which language you want to use from your IP address. And generally get it only partially correct. At the moment Blogger sometimes thinks I'm in England and sometimes in France, changing from English to French randomly and frequently.

Perhaps that is why I struggle with our shuttling back and forth between England and France - it happens too frequently, though not quite at random. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and have to think hard to work out where I am.

Off we go again

This afternoon we leave England and go back to our house in France and yet again I am, well, less than enthusiastic. We have been doing this shuttling back and forth for almost two years and I still find it difficult, and I don't know why.

I'll be back in England, on my own, for a week in February and then we'll return for the next two month stint in mid March. Perhaps the two-month intervals are too short for me, or perhaps I've become too set in my ways. We've been seven years in this house in England, the longest uninterrupted period anywhere in my life.

Memories

So why have I started this blog?

When I lived in Paris I met a number of British women, then becoming quite elderly, who had married Frenchmen and moved to live in France between the wars. Some of them had the most amazing stories to tell, but nobody was recording them. Their stories may have died with them.

Later we returned to live in a small city in England which meant walking our dog along streets, through a cemetery and down to the river. As we walked through the cemetery, again I wondered about all the people buried there and the stories they had to tell.

As a result of those two experiences, I have been encouraging my mother to write down her memories, partly to give her an interest and partly for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She has had a very interesting life but I'm not sure that she sees it that way.

As I typed up her account of her time in Africa, it made me start to think about and question my own life. I'm hoping this blog will chart the processes I go through as I put down my thoughts.

The Promised Land

The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness

Havelock Ellis
British psycologist and author 1859 - 1939