All Our Worldly Goods

June 20, 2011
A world at war ruptures the orderly lives of two French provincial families connected by marriage in this serenely beautiful tale by French novelist Némirovsky (Suite Française). In the northern village of Saint-Elme, early in the 20th century, Pierre, the scion of the Hardelot Paper Mill family, marries Agnès Florent, whose mother is a Parisian widow of the lower middle class. The union defies Pierre's redoubtable grandfather, and the newlyweds are cast out of the village. Yet together they thrive and have a son before Pierre is called to fight in WWI. "He didn't think he would be saved, he alone among thousands of men," yet he is, returning from the front a wounded man. The villagers in tiny Saint-Elme flee the encroaching Germans, lose their husbands and sons in battle, and watch their children grow up only to face another world war. The bourgeois importance of keeping up appearances, so skillfully delineated ("Society relies entirely on nuances," notes Pierre's father, to which his mother replies, "And stupidity."), is both undermined and bolstered by the love between Agnès and Pierre. This is another stunning translation by Smith of the tremendously stirring Némirovsky, who died in Auschwitz at the age of 39.

July 1, 2011

More buried treasure from the French author killed at Auschwitz in 1942 and re-discovered in 2006; this story of a middle-class family roiled by love and war was posthumously published in 1947.

Saint-Elme in Normandy is a company town that revolves around a paper factory owned by the Hardelots. Their patriarch in the early 20th century is Julien, a domestic tyrant who has arranged the marriage of his grandson Pierre to the wealthy orphan Simone. Stability and propriety—these are his watchwords. But he has misjudged the spirited Pierre, in love with the equally spirited but less socially elevated Agnès, also being married off. The pleasure here comes from Némirovsky's dissection of the haute bourgeoisie: she knows these people, their secret selves. Gossip spreads about the lovers' innocent goodbyes in the woods. A scandal! Both engagements are broken off. Julien disowns his grandson; Pierre marries Agnès in Paris, a haven from the stifling conventions of Saint-Elme. Némirovsky excels at mordant characterizations, but her depiction of devoted couples is equally convincing, and these young people, romantic realists, make a marriage strong enough to survive a chaotic future; it anchors the novel. That chaos arrives with World War I. Roads are choked with refugees. Saint-Elme and its factory are destroyed, but Julien rebuilds and reconciles with Pierre, for the boy has fought a good war. The inter-war years see Pierre's discarded fiancée Simone emerge as a power at the factory (capital counts), though her own marriage is difficult. Her rebellious daughter will fall for Pierre's son Guy, another potential scandal. All too soon war returns, Saint-Elme and the factory are destroyed again, but Pierre and Agnès rise to the occasion. The novel has its flaws. Some characters are undeveloped; the final section is rushed. Yet they are more than outweighed by the author's almost Tolstoyan sweep, and her vision of a society refracted through one family under siege.

For English-language readers, the best introduction to Némirovsky's work.

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September 15, 2011

What makes Nemirovsky's writing so remarkable is its there-as-it's-happening feel; the writing of her masterwork, Suite Francaise, was interrupted as she was transported to Auschwitz. Published in 1947 and released here for the first time, this work serves as a precursor of sorts to Suite Francaise, opening before World War I and proceeding toward the 1940 German invasion of France. In the beginning we observe the pettiness of the bourgeoisie, as Pierre Hardelot disappoints his parents and outrages his grandfather, head of the Hardelot Paper Mills in provincial Saint-Elme, by marrying Agnes, who's from a family of brewers. Their love is sturdy, but it's not the story; soon after they marry, World War I begins, Pierre is off to battle, and we see chaos descend as towns burn and villagers clog the escape routes. Later, even as the couple's son suffers his own (slightly sordid) heartbreak, war overwhelms the family--and country--yet again. VERDICT Throughout, in deceptively simple, lucid language, Nemirovsky contrasts the delicacy of human affairs with the crushing weight of history. Nemirovsky fans and readers of historical fiction generally will want.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
N'mirovsky (190342) wrote about her volatile times with unerring command. In this multigenerational novel about patriarchal tyranny and war anchored to the tradition-bound French countryside, one would never guess that the author was anything but a French native, let alone a Russian Jewish 'migr' who attained literary fame only to be killed at Auschwitz. Pierre, who stands to inherit his stern grandfather's fortune, and Agn's, poor and fatherless, are in love, but Pierre's status-obsessed family insists on an arranged marriage to a wealthy neighbor. The young lovers rebel, and the ensuing, decades-long family trauma is exacerbated by both world wars. As in her towering Suite Franaise, N'mirovsky re-creates war's brutal disruption and the powerful force of habit that enables people under siege to carry on with their lives. As her beautifully wise and bemused voice gives way to machine-gun satire, N'mirovsky considers how blindly history repeats itself. And then she orchestrates a happy ending. See also N'mirovsky's daughter's historical novel, The Mirador, told from the point of view of her mother.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)