Future As It Is

Irene Nemirovsky8217;s work in progress is a startling portrait of occupied France

THERE IS, FIRST, THE STORY BE-HIND this moving and remarkably pol-ished novel that is technically a work in progress. In June 1940, after the Germans oc-cupied Paris, Irene Nemirovsky, already ex-tensively published, moved to the country-side with two small daughters and her husband. It was the second time that she had been forced into flight. Earlier, along with her banker father and obsessively fastidious mother, she had fled St Petersburg for France, upon the Bolshevik conquest.

It was a tenuous existence. Being Jewish, her husband, Michel Epstein, was barred from working in his bank. She could no longer be published. Her elder daughter, Denise, had the Jewish star firmly affixed on her coat. In what must have been intensely anxious times, Nemirovsky planned her most ambitious fiction so far. Working notes in-cluded in this edition detail a clear plan for a five-part novel. She got through two8212; 8216;Storm in June8217; and 8216;Dolce8217;8212;before being arrested by the French police on July 13, 1942. She died at Auschwitz on August 17. Epstein would be deported later that year.

Denise and her sister, Elizabeth, thereaft-er, were hidden in different places by their teachers. In their own flight, they gathered a few things to cart along, among them their mother8217;s notebook. The notebook8212;the man-uscript of Suite Francaise8212;was kept with great care, but they could not quite summon the strength to read through it. Years later, Eliza-beth would write a biography of her mother.

She would herself be dead by the time Denise typed out the manuscript, much of it having to be read with a magnifying glass as Ne-mirovsky8217;s script kept getting smaller and smaller to conserve paper.

That the book created a sensation when it was published in France a couple of years ago is understandable. The story of the manuscr-ipt is itself stirring. But, in this English transla-tion, it is evident that even without that back story, this is an unusually accomplished work of fiction. 8216;Storm in June8217; begins with these words: 8220;Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid.8221; The siren almost seems to gather Parisians into flight. In 8216;Dolce8217; the action shifts to women and chil-dren in the country and the German soldiers who come into their acquaintance.

Two things are striking. This is fiction be-ing written with a historical context as it un-folds. Nemirovsky was killed in mid-1942. Yet, even with the benefit of hindsight, the reader cannot better her anticipation of events. It is not just that the urgency evoked in this narra-tion in the past tense creates a dramatic sus-pense.

It indicates an uncanny perspective, a long view taken from very close quarters. And how complete Suite Francaise is in its prose and plot. Working notes indicate Nemi-rovsky suspected that time was running out on her. They hint at grand ambitions. Even without the benefit of revision and sequels, her achievement is astonishingly startling.