I was definitely GLAD I read it - so thanks to the many PBTers who picked it for me this month!!! However, it really is a terrific book - made more astounding by the background story of the author (which is included in an extensive end note).

You meet many characters, and you do get a picture of who they are, but you don't get to know many of them well. If this book was a movie, it would be described as an 'ensemble' cast. And somehow, I just wasn't really feeling them like I did in say - The Road or The Book Thief. This book has a lot of sad, and what should have been touching, events in it. Unfortunately, for me, sheer enjoyment plays a factor in my ratings, and I think I didn't quite get to know the characters well enough to feel emotionally attached to them. She's just that type of writer - truly gifted. To me, had she been able to continue to write, she probably would have been a writer of some great classics. And she sustains the level of prose throughout. Her details are specific, important, and immediately give you a perfect sense of place, person, or time. Goodness, this woman can craft a sentence. If I were merely evaluating this book on the writing alone - well it would be five star PLUS. It then moves on to a single town and paints a detailed portrait of what it was like to live in a village with the Nazi soldiers right there beside the French. It focuses on the lives of various different people - wealthy, poor, and middle class - as they react to the prospect of Paris being bombed.

Exacerbées par la présence de l'occupant, les tensions sociales et frustrations des habitants se réveillent.Roman bouleversant, intimiste, implacable, dévoilant avec une extraordinaire lucidité l'âme de chaque Français pendant l'Occupation (enrichi de notes et de la correspondance d'Irène Némirovsky), Suite française ressuscite d'une plume brillante et intuitive un pan à vif de notre mémoire.Suite Francaise takes place in Nazi occupied France in the 1940's.

Comme tant d'autres, le village de Bussy est alors contraint d'accueillir des troupes allemandes. Peu à peu l'ennemi prend possession d'un pays inerte et apeuré. Cocottes larguées par leur amant, grands bourgeois dégoûtés par la populace, blessés abandonnés dans des fermes engorgent les routes de France bombardées au hasard.

Avec bonheur, Irène Némirovsky traque les innombrables petites lâchetés et les fragiles élans de solidarité d'une population en déroute. Écrit dans le feu de l'Histoire, Suite française dépeint presque en direct l'Exode de juin 1940, qui brassa dans un désordre tragique des familles françaises de toute sorte, des plus huppées aux plus modestes.

Suite française irène némirovsky