({mhauthor})

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to have lived in the age of the classics. To have waited anxiously for the arrival of the new Dostoyevsky in your local book store, read reviews of the latest Henry James in your morning paper? How it would feel to know that what you were reading was just another book but an abiding classic that would long be remembered in the annals of literature? 

The publication of the first English translation of Irene Naemirovsky’s magnificent Suite Francaise this year, makes it possible for modern readers to experience that authentic sense of being in the presence of genius for themselves. This is an incredible book – one that recalls, in both range and depth, the works of Flaubert, Zola and Proust, and that, for the quality of its prose, its insight into human psychology, and its ability to capture the spirit of an age, bears comparison with the works of Sartre and Camus.  

Suite Francaise is set in the early 1940’s, in the time of the German occupation of France. Originally conceived as a grand opus in five parts, the book was cut short when Naemirovsky was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, and died in a concentration camp, probably of typhus, that same year.  It is a testament to Naemirovsky’s amazing talent that what survives of this aborted book – a more or less finished draft of the first two sections, is a genuine classic in its own right.  

The first section, ‘Storm’ in June, opens in Paris in 1940, with the news that the Germans are expected to invade the city shortly. This news sends the residents of the city into panic, and a mass exodus begins, with the Parisians fleeing their beloved city for the countryside – the well to do in cars, the poor on foot. ‘Storm in June’ tracks the fortunes of half a dozen different groups as they join the mass of people leaving the city, inevitably lose their way in the countryside, and eventually return to Paris to settle in for a long period of German occupation. They are a disparate cast of characters – some rich, some poor, some with families, others traveling alone, some greedy and self-centred, others kind and brave – and Naemirovsky keeps the narrative rotating briskly between them, writing short 4-5 page chapters about one group, and then switching to the other. The overall effect is cinematic, like something out of The Longest Day [1].  

Other reviewers have criticized this approach (see, for instance Dan Jacobson’s review in the London Review of Books; or Gabriele Annan’s piece in the NYRB), but I personally found it enthralling. Its like watching an intricate and clever juggling trick – Naemirovsky judges the time which each story will stay suspended in our memory perfectly, and the shuttling back and forth of the narrative creates a sense of dizzying breathlessness. There is little or no connection between the sub-plots – by and large they are independent stories of people caught in a common catastrophe, and it is only the shared momentum of history that brings them together. And Naemirovsky’s fractured narrative captures perfectly that confused sense of events on the march, of a great crowd of stories from which a face here and there emerges seemingly at random. It is the greatness of this book that it manages to combine historical perspective with individual insight, rendering sensitive and nuanced portraits of unforgettable characters, even as it accurately evokes the greater currents of feelings and events sweeping through the land. Speaking through one of her characters, a writer named Gabriel Corte, Naemirovsky writes: 

“A novel should be like a street full of strangers, where no more than two or three people are known to us in depth. Look at writers like Proust. They knew how to use minor characters to humiliate, to belittle their protagonists. In a novel, there is nothing more valuable than teaching the lesson of humility to the heroes. Remember, in War and Peace, the little peasant girls who cross the road, laughing, in front of Prince Andrei’s carriage? He speaks to them, directly, and the reader’s imagination is at once lifted; now there is not just one face, not just one soul. He portrays the many faces of the crowd.” 

This is a lesson that Naemirovsky herself seems to have taken very much to heart. The novel teems with fascinating details and minor characters whose personalities and stories are sketched flawlessly in a few short lines. Reading the book, you have the constant sense of a million other stories intersecting with the one you are reading. It is this that gives the book its epic quality, without detracting from the depth of its central plot. Tolstoy would have approved.  

But behind the seeming randomness of Naemirovsky’s selection of characters to follow, is a baroque richness of contrast and comparison. Naemirovsky is an unflinching social critic, and one of the aims of her novel is to explore the dynamics of economic and social class in a time of crisis. A committed realist, Naemirovsky is quick to do away with both the myth that social class ceases to matter in times of war and national crisis (if anything, she suggests, it becomes more important, with the poorer classes suffering far greater deprivation and injustice) and the belief that people respond to these crisis with generosity and nobility of spirit. Human nature, Naemirovsky suggests, is not fundamentally altered by the events of history, rather it adapts itself to these events, so that the prejudices of the past assume new forms in the present. Even in the midst of earth-shattering events, people are the same as they always were – sentimental and petty, concerned only with their own egos, their own anxieties, their own social circles. Wartime society is basically the same as peacetime society. This may sound like a cynical point of view, but Naemirovsky is too observant a writer to paint the world in black and white. As the novel progresses, her characters are both heroic and selfish, silly and inspired. Some of the righteous suffer, but others are rewarded; some of the wrong-doers prosper, others are punished. Naemirovsky’s greatest gift is her ability to describe human nature, in all its frailness and glory. This is a novel rich in contradictory emotions – there is a great deal of biting satire, irony, and dark humour, but there are also passages of heartbreaking simplicity and pathos, deep currents of both sympathy and outrage, whimsical amusement joined to tragic melancholy.  

These qualities continue into the second section of the novel, ‘Dolce’, where the action moves to a small village in the French countryside which is under German occupation. Here the brisk panic of the first section gives way to a more languorous sadness, and the narrative is more orderly, but the narrowing of frame also gives Naemirovsky the opportunity to show off her skills as a social observer. The tiny village community comes alive vividly under her pen, complete with the trivial intrigues and jealousies of the villagers. The menace of German occupation is a constant presence in the book, but behind it one sees a strangely peaceful vision of the idyllic world that has been shattered. Reading ‘Dolce’, I was reminded, for some reason, of Jane Austen, of the subtle delights of an intricate and half-hidden world, flawlessly described.  

This is a considerable achievement, and it is made even more astonishing by the way Naemirovsky finds it in her heart to show the German soldiers occupying the village in a sympathetic light. These are not monsters from some other species come to ravage and destroy the world, Naemirovsy insists, they are ordinary human beings – young men with the ideals and longings of youth and the awkwardness of country boys. They have the same dreams, the same hopes as the people they have conquered, they too have memories of homes they want to get back to, they too are confused, unsure, hesitant to wield the power they have suddenly gained, but also tempted by it. To write like this in 1941, when anti-German sentiments must have been running high, to resist the desire to hate or condemn, is an act of incredible compassion, and Naemirovsky’s clearsighted and balanced point of view stands in sharp contrast to the bigotry and prejudice of those who sent her to a concentration camp shortly after ‘Dolce’ was written.  

But the brilliance of Suite Francaise goes beyond its intricate plotting, its intriguing characters, its moving storylines, its sense of historic authenticity, its value as a fundamentally honest account of the realities of German occupation. There is also the sheer joy of Naemirovsky’s writing. Prose this lucid, this compelling, is rare, and Naemirovsky seems to delight in pushing herself in new and unexpected directions. Of my two favourite chapters in the book, one follows the progress of a cat as it stirs about the house at night and finally makes its way into the garden, the other is told from the perspective of a little girl watching two of the main protagonists as they experience an intensely emotional moment in their relationship. These chapters are small miracles of good writing, pages that deserve to be read over and over again as examples of how good prose is written. The book would be worth reading for these ten pages alone. But most of the writing in Suite Francaise is of the highest standard, and Naemirovsky, in addition to her other gifts, has a talent for creating scenes of intense and lyrical beauty. 

Overall then, Suite Francaise is probably the best book to be published this year. It is a book that deserves to be read and re-read and then re-read again and then placed safely on your bookshelf to pass on to your grandchildren when they grow old enough to appreciate good writing. This, after all, is why we write – in the hope of being able to say something so authentic, so essential, that it becomes a permanent part of the history of the human voice. Irene Naemrivosky’s voice, so cruelly silenced by the butchers of the Third Reich, deserves to be part of that larger dialogue, and to treasure it, to cherish the lucidity and sympathy of her writing, is to acknowledge the fundamental indestructibility of great art – its ability to surivive, its ability to transcend. “What is precious” Stephen Spender writes, in the poem from which the title of this review is taken, is never to forget “those who in their lives fought for life / Who wore at their heart the fire’s centre.” And Irene Naemirovsky, is, undoubtably, one of them.   

[1] Naemirovsky herself acknowledges her cinematic ideal, writing, in her notes to the novel: “My idea is for it to unravel like a film”.