Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky

I've been on a fiction kick lately. Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise was a birthday present from a good friend. The backdrop is an occupied France in the early years of World War II; the scope encompasses the spirit and resiliance of humanity. I devoured the sections of Suite Francaise, "Storm in June" and "Dolce." The final words of the novel, "Soon the road was empty. All that remained ... was a little cloud of dust," left me hungry, ravenous. My appetite for the lives of these French civilians and German solidiers would never be satiated for Nemirovsky was murdered in an Auschwitz gas chamber in 1942; she never finished her work.

The tragedy of World War II and Nemirovsky's perspective of the contemporary goings-on as she wrote, fill her novel published 64 years after its inception by her daughter, Denise Epstein. In many ways it is impossible to seperate the personal history from the literature -- a dangerous reality for a creative work. However, the scope and humanity, language of life and war, and insight into the human condition ensure that Suite Francaise is an invaluable to the library of literature that spans continents and centuries.

The truth wrought on the page and the detail and precision of images present fine writing. A piece of historical fiction, a contemporary commentary of the plight of Europe and state of humanity in the midst of a war-torn world, Irene Nemirovsky exposes the heartbreaking tragedy of hatred and war. Suite Francaise, as a novel of intersecting lives, loss, love, guilt, and the push for life, is heartwrenching. Studied seperatly or together, read for pleasure or insight, history and literature merge to show the essence of what it is to be human, transcending national identity and the passage of decades.

Suite Francaise is elegant movement, intricately manipulated, like a symphony of words, connecting characters -- pulling them together and apart as they try to make sense of the mess of Europe, survive, and even enjoy life. Beauty, often tragic, drips from each page. My reading of the work moved from being lost in a story to interaction with ideas presented, simply stated truths and thoughts. The use of rhetorical question, of characters pondering motives, intentions, the state of France, and their places in the world, are demonstative of the thoughts that plauged Nemirovsky, deep questions that provoke the meaning of humanity.

Irene Nemirovsky makes use of natural imagery. The image and manipulation of birds become a central motif and metaphor for the citizens of France, and, largely, for anyone -- civillian or soldier -- displaced by war. In a chapter of "Storm in June," Nemirovsky takes on the perspective of a family's displaced cat. The city creature is enticed by the scents of the country. It is the only time in the novel in which Nemirovsky personifies and explores as a non-human, a cat stalking prey in the night. It is in nature that we find the basic instincts of life and death -- as modeled by human society. Nemirovsky delves into the horrors of kiling with the cat's appetite, gorging itself on the offerings of the country:

"There was the sound of leaves rustling and he came back carrying a small dead bird in his mouth, his tongue slowly lapping at its wound. Eyes closed, he swallowed the warm blood. He had plunged his claws into the bird's heart and clenched and unclenched his talons, digging deeper and deeper and deeper into the tender flesh that covered his delicate bones with slow and rhythmical movements until its heart stopped beating..." (p. 106)

Suite Francaise can be examined philosophically, aesthetically, and merely enjoyed as a story. The mutlitude of lens through which the novel can be viewed stands only as a testament to its value. This is the literature students in high school and college should read; this is our human truth.

Quotations/passages to consider:

"Machine-guns fired on the convoy. Death was gliding across the sky and suddenly plunged down fromthe heavens, wings out-stretched, steel beak firing on this long line of trembling black insects crawling along the road... Only when it had been quiet for a few moments could you hear the cries and moans: people calling to one another, moans that went ignored, cries shouted out in vain..." (p. 82)

" '...but I think that in this war civilians are facing more dangers than the soldiers. They say that certain towns...' he lowered his voice, '...are in ashes and piled high with bodies and ther are mass graves...' " (p. 118)

"They were done - they felt they were done - in the great sleeping house. Not a word of their true feelings was spoken; they didn't kiss. There was simply silence. Silence followed by feverish passionate conversation..." (p. 323)

"Madeleine opened the door wihtout making a sound and slipped out into the deserted wet garden where tears seemed to drip from the trees ... The storm was over, but an angry wind continued to rage." (p. 329)

Crow Lake -- Mary Lawson

As a writer and scholar, a lover of words, there are few books I burn through reading without a single marginalia [Cue: chuckles if you're familiar of Billy Collins poem]. Oftentimes my lack of dog-earred paged and pencil stains is a good credit to the author for creating something so spellbinding that I am unable to move my hands from the page, my eyes hook onto the potential of the next word and my sleep cycle is ruined until I am able to finish digesting the book. Such is the case of Mary Lawson's Crow Lake.

Finding and deciding to purchase Crow Lake was a strange move for me. I tend to be stuck on my literary likes of genre and material. Unless a work outside of poetry, memoir, travel essay, or philosophy is handed or recommended to me, I won't find myself adventurous to pry it from the bookshelf, blaze some new territory, take a chance. However, I challenged myself with Crow Lake, wrestled with an internal monologue fighting against my usual character and purchasing from a genre from a "new" writer outside of my norm.

Before I could reason with my credit card, I was at home in a porch swing letting Mary Lawson's narrative fill me. I finished and re-read the final few pages again and again, rocking on a porch swing, unaware of the passage of time outside the lives of the characters Kate and Matt, Luke and Bo, swept in the relationships of siblings, of the distances of human interactions mirrored by life.

It isn't until the final pages that I left my enchanted state to add to marginalia notes. On the final page of the story, in scribbled script, dangling in the white space of open thought, I wrote, "lang + tone." A paragraph later I underlined, "silver birches," (p.291). Unless someone's taken a day to read the story, I don't think any number of letters on a page can significantly explain the meaning of that simple image.

I am hesitant to list my favorite books or pieces of writing. However, Crow Lake easily makes the cut. It is a story of tragedy -- and of healing -- and the miscommunications of guilt, shame, and unconditional love that bind people to one another. Lawson unravels the mysteries of a family and uses Canada's natural beauty as the enviornmental backdrop.

A review in the Washington Post got it right: "Lawson communicates not only the lovely awe and beauty of the landscape but the way its inhabitants function within it. Crow Lake is the kind of book that keeps you reading well past midnight; you grieve when it's over. Then you start pressing it on friends."

And, o, my friends, I hope it is something in which you choose to lose yourself.