Suite Francaise

I go through phases with reading novels. For a time, I will read novels rapaciously, one after the next. Novels are the books that I cannot put down. I have stayed up all night reading: The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five, Barney's Version, The Brothers Karamazov. Then I will go through months, years! of not cracking a novel, consumed as I can get with the stuff of my last post. But recently a good friend and colleague (another Matthew), recommended Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. She wrote it during the Nazi occupation of France, before perishing in the death camp of Auschwistz. Her daughters protected the manuscript, thinking it was a journal, only to find out later it was a breathtaking fiction. Only recently was it translated from the French. I started it last night, and read the first several chapters. It has the feel, even in translation, of a classic. So, if you're the novel-reading sort, I recommend Suite Francaise.