Taken from the Abbey's Website:

SUITE FRANCAISE has all the ingredients of a major bestseller: the story behind its rediscovery is extraordinary; the life of the author is fascinating and moving; but, most importantly, it is a hugely compelling work of literature, elegantly, subtly and simply written, with astounding insight into the moral complexities of the human condition.

It comprises two parts of what might have been a four or five-part work had Irene not been taken to Auschwitz. She conceived of it as a symphony - or her WARE AND PEACE.

In the first part, Storm in June, she tells of the exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion. Bourgeois and working-class characters alike pack up their belongings and flee, forced to rub shoulders in traffic-jams on the crowded roads south, some behaving with dignity, others with nauseating selfishness.

In Part Two, Dolce, we meet several of them again in a small French village where Nazi soldiers are billetted, and watch Lucille's story unfold as she tries to resist the attractions of a sensitive German officer, and takes the risk of defending a young farmer who joins the resistance.

The intertwining stories of all these utterly engaging and vivid characters combine to produce a unique portrait of France at that time, and of the subtle calibrations that exist between collaboration and resistance.

Offering up as a bookring. Participants are:

- lakelady2282 (Australia)
- sally906 (Australia)
- Triggerfish (United Kingdom)
- jesmondgirl (United Kingdom)
- mallary (France)
- SqueakyChu (USA)
- LyekkaMarengo (PA, USA)
- FeralReader (USA)
- eicuthbertson (Canada)
- CdnLibrarian (Canada)
- Jubby (Australia)
- Crimson-Tide (Australia)

RELEASE NOTES:

Posted off to Lakelady2282.

Thank you Jubby for organising the ring of this wonderful book. The book arrived safely today. I am sure I am going to enjoy it. Though enjoy is probably not the right word when dealing with the subject matter of man's inhumanity to man.

Just finished the book tonight and I was so surprised by it - by the vivid characters and the telling details chosen by someone who obviously saw a lot of this history unfolding right before her eyes. I was definitely not expecting many of the descriptions - the countryside to be beautiful - moonlight, lilacs and the first German to ride into the village - to be so young, fresh-faced and polite. But this is what the author does so well - juxtoposing the everyday with the inconceivable. This is a wonderful read and I am putting up a post in Book Talk to find out what other novels of hers have been translated into English. Will pm Sally906. Thanks so much Jubby. I am so glad I read this book.

RELEASE NOTES:

Sorry for the delay. I just couldn't get to the Post Office. I hope you enjoy the book.
Debbie

Arrived in the mail today - have one bookring book and two review books ahead of it - will have it on it's way by the end of February.

Have just started reading it - will be another week or so before it moves on to the next in line - I already have the snail mail address :)

Finished today - Wow, what a book - thank you for sharing. Will be mailing it off to the next person on payday.

RELEASE NOTES:

Mailed to Triggerfish

Book arrived today. Thank you.

Fascinating book, as were the appendices. How sad that the author's life was brought to such a sudden end. The book illuminated the adjustments made by French people to the Occupation.
The book was particularly poignant for me, as my father was in France in June 1940. He was in the 51st Highland Division, which was captured while awaiting evacuation in Normandy. He spent the rest of the war, as a prisoner, working on farms in Poland. Better than the fate meted out to Jews, and, as he always said, better than being captured by the Japanese.
I have included an newspaper interview with Nemirovsky's daughter with the book.
Thank you for sharing this Jubby.
Will post on this week.

Posted to jesmondgirl today.
14/6/07 Update- j'girl has confirmed that book has arrived safely.

Arrived safely .

Finishing one I have to read by Tuesday for my book group then this is next.

This took me a little while to get into but was well worth reading.
It was so rewarding to read a book where the occupiers and occupied were so clearly not delineated in black and white but in a myriad shades of grey.
It showed how occupation brings out the best and the worst in both sides.

Sending this on to Mallory

Arrived today in France!
I can't wait to read this book, I am just reading Small Island and then this is next.

Maybe because I am surrounded by stories like this (my neighbours all have vivid memories of the occupation and the recriminations that occured in this town when anyone defied the occupiers - people being nailed to our church door for example) but I didn''t enjoy this book as much as I''d hoped I would. In fact, most of it made me sigh and skip pages because it''s all so familiar.
But thank you for sharing it with me. Maybe I should avoid this genre for a while as it''s too close to home.
On it''s way to SqueakyChu.

The book just arrived. It's a thick book, isn't it? Can't wait to read it though. It'll be a while before I get to it, but I promise to take good care of the book and keep you updated.

Thank you, mallary, for sending me this book all the way from France. It *was* originally written in French and *is* about France - so that's nice! I also appreciate the two bookmarks that you included. What you wrote was sad and scary. I lost grandparents in the Holocaust so I think this book may also be a somewhat hard read for me. I need to read such books, though, to remind myself of how the world was, sometimes still is, and try to do what I can to make the world a more fair place for people of all kinds.

First of all, I'd like to say thank you to jubby who was so kind as to not notify me that I was taking too long with this book! I had to finish several other ring books first, but always had in mind to complete Suite Francaise as quickly as I could.

Then I began to actually read this book. It was not a book that could be read quickly. It was long and had small chapters that needed to be savored.

This is not the kind of book I usually read. However I found the book very beautiful. It is an unusual war story in that it looks at war from a distant and personal point of view. I've always thought of Germany as the place from where my father barely escaped with his life and the Nazis as those barbarians who gassed my maternal grandparents in Auschwitz. This book, however, looks at World War II from another perspective. The first part of the book is of Parisians fleeing Paris as the Germans invade. The second part of the book is the story of German soldiers being lodged in rural farmhouses during their occupation of France.

The story was interesting to read, although I did the helpful thing of writing down the list of characters so that I would not confuse them from chapter to chapter. What really grabbed me in the end (literally) were the appendices which gave the author's notes and family correspondence. These were so necessary to giving a fuller appreciation of this novel and for the author herself.

This has been a most moving reading experience. Thank you for sharing this book with me, jubby. The book is now in the mail to LyekkaMarengo in Pennsylvania.

Happy 2008 to all!

Received safe and sound in Central PA. Just have to finish the book I'm reading now.

I've had this way too long and I'm afraid it just never grabbed me. Sending it on to FeralReader in Davis, CA.

Arrived in my post office box today. Thank you, Jubby and LyekkaMarengo! I've been looking forward to reading this book after having it recommended by a friend quite a while ago.

**I read this amazing book and did not find the time to journal it; planning to journal later.**

Yay! Received this in today's post.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this bookring.
Now, it is my turn to read it.

A successful bookring. My faith in bookcrossing has been restored.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

I did read this book some time ago, but forgot to journal!

My memories of this story was being impressed with how well crafted it was for a partial draft.
But, I couldn't bring myself to finish reading the appendix - far too sad, and real.

Posting to the last participant in this bookray: Crimson-tide.

Thanks very much jubby. I've heard so much about this book and will look forward to reading it.

Whoa . . . has it really been sitting on my shelf this long?? Not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this, and I was very pleasantly surprised.

As already mentioned the book is two parts (novellas) of a planned five part suite, unfinished due to Nemirovsky’s untimely and tragic death. The first ( 'Storm in June' ) describes the chaotic exodus by panicked civilians from Paris following the German invasion in mid 1940. The second ( 'Dolce' ) is set in a small town occupied by and forced to host a regiment of german soldiers, showing the interactions between the townspeople and the military.

While the two sections are quite different in subject matter, style and tone, there is some overlap of characters. The major similarity is that both chronicle events from the perspective of ordinary people attempting to make sense of extraordinary times and get through as best they can.

What makes these accounts extra special is that they were written contemporaneously and despite the hugely difficult and threatening situation in which Nemirovsky found herself, the treatment of these ordinary people is very humane, gentle and non-judgemental. And that applies to both the French and the Germans. Perhaps not so much wrt to the ‘entitled’ upper classes though. Times such as war do not change people’s basic character or behaviour very much. Neither do they remove the emotional impact of more personal issues.

As Nemirovsky said herself at the end of Appendix I (her notes and diary entries):
“The most important and most interesting thing here is the following: the historical revolutionary facts etc must be only lightly touched upon while daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides must be described in detail."

The writing in this book is lovely while at the same time being acutely perceptive. The characters have depth and are sensitively portrayed without falling into caricature. She writes with a broad scope, juxtaposing the mundane with greater outside events but we never lose sight of the individual life. The overall effect is beautiful and powerful.

Wishlist tag for a new reader. Enjoy!

What a well travelled book this is! Thank you crimson-tide for this long wished for title.

I finished this book a few weeks ago so my review will not be as detailed as it could be.
Incredible that the book was not published until long after the author’s death and a shame that it was only two parts of what was planned to be a five part novel.
I thought the first section about the mainly privileged wealthy Parisians fleeing the war painted a somewhat slanted view of the war and the effect on the population.
The second part dealt more with the humanity of the soldiers and the villagers, and turned the occupying force into real people. I thought the author gave these characters much more depth.
Overall, I am pleased to have read such an important novel about the humanity of the Second World War.

To the finder of this book -
Please let me and previous readers know it is in safe hands by journalling that you have caught it; you are under no obligation to read it.
Bookcrossing is completely free and anonymous and members have been releasing books all over the world for more than 20 years.
If you choose to become a member you will also be able to follow this book’s future story.