Captive prose

Of the two novellas, the first, "Storm in June," is the more impressive. It opens with an air raid, as the residents of Paris realize that there is no stopping the Nazis and simultaneously decide to hit the road. As E.L. Doctorow did last year in "The March," Némirovsky conjures up the confusion of the mass exodus by having the narrative jump from character to character.

"My God! What is this country doing to me? Since it is rejecting me, let us consider it coldly, let's watch as it loses its honour and its life," Némirovsky wrote, and "Storm in June" features plenty of acid observations on the conduct of the French civilians.

"If events as painful as defeat and mass exodus cannot be dignified with some nobility, some grandeur, then they shouldn't happen at all!" Gabriel Corte, a celebrated writer, complains after being stuck in traffic next to a homely wounded woman who dares to talk to him. There is nobility on display, though almost all of it belongs to the Michauds, a middle-aged couple who were assigned to leave Paris with their boss. They arrive to find their places usurped by his mistress and her dog. Their boss takes the opportunity to berate them for not working hard enough and then threatens them: "If you want to keep your jobs, take this as a warning. Both of you must be in Tours the day after tomorrow at the latest. I must have all my staff."

Quietly, the Michauds return home, eat lunch, and then begin the trek on foot. Their concern is all for their son, Jean-Marie, a soldier, whom the reader learns was wounded and is being cared for in Bussy, the site of Némirovsky's second novella, "Dolce."

"Dolce" concentrates on village life under German occupation. Quieter and more gentle than "Storm in June," it focuses on Lucile Angellier, whose philandering husband is a prisoner of war. She is living uncomfortably with her disapproving mother-in-law when a German officer is billeted with them.

Bruno von Falk is clean and polite, plays the piano, and reads Balzac. But Némirovsky is interested in more than forbidden love in wartime. A farmer has killed a German officer, and his wife (who, incidentally, helped nurse Jean-Marie Michaud in the first book) comes to Lucile for help.

Némirovsky certainly isn't the first person to be able to draw inspiration from the world events that engulfed her, but her ability to write so ably under such straitened conditions is heroic. She is not unlike World War I poets like Wilfred Owen and Charles Sorley, who also didn't survive the war they chronicled.

In her notes, Némirovsky wrote, "The most important and most interesting thing here is the following: the historical, revolutionary facts etc. must be only lightly touched upon, while daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides must be described in detail."

Although unable to finish her epic, Némirovsky nonetheless achieved her goal.

• Yvonne Zipp is a freelance writer in Kalamazoo, Mich.

Page: 1 | 2