A fortuitous find
I am always one book short of clinical depression without a book to look forward to. Sometimes I feel that I have read everything worth reading by my crochety tastes, andf will be stuck re-reading "When Patty Went to College" for the rest of my life.
Then I get lucky. On a pile of discards at the Good Will, I discovered "All Our Worldly Goods" by Irene Nemirovsky. I almost skipped it because I noted that the author had been killed in the Holocaust and I thought her work might be gloomy and depressing. Au contraire!
I find it difficult to express anything positive or approving about a book or movie. Dislike is so much easier to articulate. Nemirov, though, delighted me. I think you will like her work if you like Tolstoy, or maybe Balzac. The milieu is bourgeous France between the wars, and she is a keen observer of manners and mores, with a dazzling lightness of touch.
I downloaded another of her books to my Kindle, "Suite Francaise," which is even better, also taking place just before the German defeat, a period of great despair, confusion, and hysteria in France. The advancing German troops disrupt everyone's lives and turn everyone into a refugee. The fabric of society is torn and can never be reclaimed. Except it is, after a fashion.
Read the damn book!
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5 comments:
Unfortunately, I, too, was sold on the description in my public library-online. I vaguely remembered reading some of Nemirovsky's concoctions in the past, and it wasn't half bad, so I did downloaded Jezebel for the weekend relax.
Oh-the-gods-of-belle lettres!
Absolute horror. Molasses in never-ending slime mixed with rotten operatic moralizing. Suffering of poor Jezebel of 1935 made me want to kill her already, on page 15.
Never, ever read that book!
As always, a great read.
Tat: too late-I already downloaded Jezebel to my Kindle. But I do recommend Suite Francaise.
..and I recommend Harris' Roman trilogy. Or start with his Pompeii.
I've already read all of his books, except the new one. He's great.
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