book
pick
Suite Française is a journey
of time and emotion
Book
gıveaway
The war outside her door
By J. Rentilly
HUMANKIND’S GREATEST narratives are living, tomorrow, or if you’ll ever go back,” says
breathing things, capable of transcending space and Bloom, whopointsoutthat Némirovsky’s
time, conjuring universal truths, experiences and book is unique in that it was written dur-feelings. Sometimes the journeys of these stories ing the historic period it describes. “Mos t
from writer to reader are as profound and moving fiction we read about World War II wa s
as the stories themselves. written with the benefit of hindsight, b ut
Such is the case with Irène Némirovsky’s Suite this book is a story in which the author w as
Française, penned in secret during World War II in the same position as her characters— she
when the author—a popular French novel- did not know what was to come, a nd
ist of her time—was ripped from her she wrote the book just as these
family and home in Paris and shipped events were occurring around her.”
to the death camp at Auschwitz, “There is nothing else like it in
where she died at the age of 39. The French literature,” says Némirovsky
book remained unread for five biographer Jonathan M. Weiss, who
decades, the original handwritten praises the novel’s precise and hon-manuscript guarded closely by est description of the mass exodus
Némirovsky’s daughter, Denise of Jews from Paris in 1940.
Epstein, who avoided her mother’s Némirovsky’s prose is infused
words for fear the experience would with an intense musicality, its in-be too painful. tended five parts— “an epic along the
In 1998, Epstein arranged to do- scale of War and Peace,” says Bloom—
nate her mother’s papers to a French set to mirror a symphony’s quintet of
archive and finally read the volume she Irène Némirovsky movements. (Sadly, only two parts were
had avoided for so many years. Instantly completed at the time of Némirovsky’s
recognizing the manuscript’s artistic merits, and its death.) Notes and possible titles (Captivity, Battles
unlikely survival of Auschwitz’s sweep of destruc- and Peace) for the final three sections exist, and are
tion, Epstein set about transcribing her mother’s collected in Vintage-Anchor’s American paperback
handwritten work, which was published in France in edition of the book.
PHOTO COUR TESY VINTAGE-ANCHOR BOOKS 2007
2004, becoming an instant bestseller. Vintage-Anchor “We’re very lucky to have this book,” says Bloom,
Books, a division of Random House, acquired North who has also edited two other books by Némirovsky,
American rights shortly thereafter, and has sold Fire in the Blood, published last year, and a collection
nearly 1 million copies of the book stateside. of four early novels (David Golder, The Ball, Snow in
“In a sense, the publication [of Suite Française] Autumn and The Courilof Affair), published last
was a perfect storm: an amazing novel combined January. “Suite Française is a gem and a testament to
with a fascinating story,” says Lexy Bloom, the the power of good literature.” C
book’s American editor. “We knew we had something really special.”
Though Némirovsky was largely unknown to
American readers until the 21st-century publication
of Suite Française, she was a budding literary star
in France in the 1920s and ’30s. Author of 15 books,
a Sorbonne-educated, high-society regular, she was
a Russian-born Jew who enjoyed fin de siècle Paris
after her family’s immigration. However, World War
II showed Némirovsky and her family—including a
husband and two daughters—no mercy. When
Germany raided France, Némirovsky was identified
as a Jew, torn from her family and moved to Auschwitz,
where she died of typhus in 1942.
Suite Française, written clandestinely in “an old,
leather-bound volume lined with tiny, spidery handwriting,” according to Bloom, recalls with “stunning
immediacy” and “amazing attention to detail” the
chaos, fury and trauma of being shunted from champagne celebrations to certain death.
“You feel, when you read Suite Française, that
you too are fleeing from Paris as the Germans
invade, not knowing if you are to return home
C OSTCO HAS 50 copies
o f Irène Némirovsky’s
S uite Française to give
a way. To enter, print
y our name, mem-
bership number,
a ddress and daytime
p hone number on a
postcard or letter
a nd send it to:
I rène Némirovksy,
T he Costco Connection,
P .O. Box 34088, Seattle,
WA 98124-1088. Or send
an e-mail to giveaway@
costco.com, with
“Irène Némirovksy”
in the subject line.
No purchase is necessary. Open
to legal residents of the U.S.
(except Puerto Rico) who are age
18 or older at the time of entry
and who are current Costco
members. One entry per household. Entries must be received or
postmarked by April 1, 2008. Winners will be randomly selected
and notified by mail on or before
May 1, 2008. The value of the
prize is $14.95. Void where prohibited. Winners are responsible
for all applicable federal, state
and local taxes. Odds of winning
depend on the number of eligible
entries received. Employees of
Costco or Random House and
their families are not eligible.
J. Rentilly is a Los Angeles–based journalist who
writes about film, music and literature for a variety
of national and international publications.
Send your feedback
on this month’s book to:
discussionquestions@
costco.com.
WHEN I PICK UP a book I immediately turn to any
notes in the back. Had I not done that with this month’s
pick, Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, I would not
have appreciated the depth of her work. Not only did
Némirovsky write a gripping story of World War II
France, but she did it with the war raging outside her
door. Add to that the fact that she was taken away to
Auschwitz, where she died, and readers are left feeling
the loss of a novel and an author’s life that both came
to untimely ends. I cannot thank her daughter enough
for making sure this work was published.
Némirovsky’s Suite Française is available at most
Costco warehouses and on costco.com.
Pennie Clark
Ianniciello
Costco Book Buyer
FRANCE FREEMAN
