Looks like a great book!

I had a very thoughtful and long journal entry in the midst when my laptop froze and I lost all. I'll have to rethink it, and write it again, but not now because I'm still fuming!

I’ve read many WWII books, both fiction and non-fiction; none has touched me the way these two books and appendices have. Stating that the writing, in an unedited form, is nothing short of brilliant is an understatement. Knowing Irene Nemirovsky’s story and the ultimate outcome only makes it all the more poignant. Before her masterpiece could be finished and edited, she was arrested, shipped to Auschwitz, and subsequently died. Her daughter kept this manuscript with her throughout the war, and only 60 years later chose to have it published.

Nemirovsky was born a Russian Jew, but converted to Catholicism and had lived in France some 20 or so years as an accomplished best-selling novelist when she began this book. What we read today is actually the first
two parts of what was meant to be a 5 part, 1000 page novel, Storm in June and Dolce. To add to the interest of the book, the second appendix includes the author’s thoughts and musings on the book, the notes she penned in an effort to keep track of her writing efforts and maintain her central focus. And what was her focus? What did she want to convey?

She wanted to tell us a story, without preachiness, she wanted her readers to come to their own conclusions, to discern for themselves the horrors, the terrors, the comedy, the uncertainties and the unknown of the German occupation. Nemirovsky wrote these books without knowing what was going on beyond the borders of France, but certainly her gut feeling was pessimistic.

In Storm in June, various families of different social levels and occupations which range from well-known and pampered writer to bank teller, from newborn to senile, take to the streets trying to flee the imminent intrusion of the Germans into Paris. As people take their jewels and prized possessions, some have chauffeurs to drive them out of the city, and others have only their own two feet – but off they go, and their lives change drastically along the way. Many of them lose all their earthly belongings, some lose themselves, others lose a parent, a son, a daughter. The reactions tell the real story of humanity, with all its quirks, in light of an unbelievably difficult situation.

Her second book, Dolce, is not part 2, but it complements the first book. One can only imagine what would have happened had she been able to complete the intended 5 sections. Dolce is set in the countryside, in a small village which is occupied by the Germans. Families with sons in the military, waiting for them to come home safe, with dead sons, others injured, with fathers, brothers and relatives for whom this war is déjà vue of the not so distant WWI., eye the German Nazi’s with hatred, distaste and resistance. Young girls, young women, deprived of a youth dedicated to not much more than romance and husband-seeking, look at the dapper, polite Germans with different eyes. Collaboration was not unheard of, and in fact it thrived under these circumstances. The individual dramas, with no judgment, and conveyed through the stories of these individuals come alive and leave the reader to drawer his own conclusions.

This gripping, extraordinary book is greatly enhanced by the notes and letters which comprise the 2nd appendix; they are heartbreaking.

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