Charles Finch

I may be the last person in America to have read Irene Nemirovsky's astonishing novel Suite Francaise, which lay dormant for 64 years after her death in Auschwitz. The book's broadsides against upper class hypocrisy are too uncomplicated, and its faith in the Michauds' middle class virtue too complete, to merit the comparisons it has to Tolstoy etc. But for all that it's a remarkable book, and above all an entirely credible one, because of its place in history. The book's chief virtue is its ability to see the simultaneous absurdity and significance of individual experience against the vast canvas of war, and its descriptive powers are surpassing. But above all, that credibility, which every scornful mention of Petain and Laval confirms. When I last lived in Paris Maurice Papon died, and Nemirovsky predicted with eerie accuracy the reaction of the newspapers to a last breathing vestige of Vichyism: half-condemnation, half-curiosity. I'm curious about whether her book revived or put to final rest that great national debate about whether World War II was an aberration from or a revelation of the French character...