Lit Geek Update # 20: Moving On

(the Suite Francaise manuscript)

Whew. Finally.

A heavy read, this one (probably helps explain the snail's pace with which I read it?). It is a war novel, a big hint that it was to be no light reading fare; and what further padded up the weight were the circumstances around the novel's writing and publication.

Irene Nemirovsky's childhood was not what one would call a happy one. She came from a wealthy family, but her problematic, strained relationship with her mother more than clouded up her early years. I'm thinking this toughened her up and prepared her for the darkness which she was to grope around in during her final years.

Fast forward to her adult years--

An established writer/socialite, she and her husband had to move around a lot to flee persecution during the 2nd World War, them being Jews and their conversion to Catholicism not being enough to save them from certain, imminent death which awaited all the Jews during that dark period.

The novel was written in the middle of the chaos and done secretly, scribbled in handwriting so tiny that Nemirovsky's daughter, Denise, many, many years later, had to use a magnifying glass in order "to decipher the miniscule handwriting" (preface to the French edition, p. 512) and type the manuscript for publishing.

I found it uncanny, reading about how the novel survived and found its way into the world's bookshelves. Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz in 1942, and Suite Francaise was published 64 years later. Her two daughters, mere children when their mother died, had instinctively--seeing how painstakingly (and discreetly) their mother had labored over it--kept the manuscript in a suitcase. It became their constant companion in their transit from one place to another in order to escape the fate their parents had met (death in the gas chambers). The manuscript, through the children's loving protection and care--they had meant to keep it as a memento of their mother--miraculously survived the unfriendliness of the era.

The book, though unfinished, has a lot to say about the war (Germany's occupation of France, specifically), and even more about the human tenacity to cling to life in the middle of a death-strewn age, resilience amidst trials, the power of faith, of hope.

I am glad the book found its way into my hands.
Thanks, M--.

Next on my list: E. M. Forster's A Room With A View