January’s meeting was to discuss Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. Because of the Christmas period not everyone had been able to read it, but it was still a fascinating meeting.

Irene Nemirovsky was a Russian Jew whose family fled Russia just after the First World War. They settled in France where she became a successful novelist. In 1942 the Nazis declared that under the race laws France’s Jews were to be ‘sent to the East.’ Both Nemirovsky and her husband were arrested but the arresting gendarme urged the girls, Denise and Elisabeth, to escape. Denise took her mother’s leather-bound notebook with her as a keepsake. Both their parents died in Auschwitz during that year.

Denise assumed that the notebook, full of tiny writing, was a diary, and years passed before she felt able to read it, and more still until she felt publishing it was not a betrayal to her mother. It was a projected five part novel – two parts of which were completed – the final three are sketched out in notes. The story tells of the fall and occupation of France in the Second World War. Perhaps some people might let the harrowing nature of its subject put them off reading it, but they shouldn’t as it’s a wonderful and often funny read. Nemirovsky describes the fine details of the individuality and humanity of both the French people’s experience and that of some of the German soldiers.

It led to discussions about tales of political dramas in previous posts as well as being relevant to the Bangkok in which we are living. I know I didn’t give it the attention it really deserved, but it really is a wonderful read and I totally recommend it to everyone.