Category Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

The Monday Book: SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky

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The Monday Book falls on a Tuesday this week due to Celtic Festivals and kitten spays.

suiteIrene Nemirovsky was a Ukranian-born Jewish woman who lived in Paris and enjoyed a successful writing  career. She planned five short novels to be part of a book titled Suite Francaise, but she had only written two and drafted the third when she was rounded up, deported, and murdered.

What’s amazing about the first novel “Storm in June” is how accurately it describes something ongoing. Nemirovsky never got the luxury of time to contemplate what she saw, so her characterizations of the upper class family, the pompous writer, the sweet middle-class couple, and the nasty antiques dealer fleeing (or trying to flee) Paris sprang almost fully formed as she watched it unfold in front of her. I wonder who (or how many) of her colleagues she skewered in the darkly hysterical portrait of the famous author and his mistress as they flee, first in pomp and style, then with whatever diminishing wits they can gather about them.

Then there’s “Dolce,” from which a film is/has been made. It’s more of an expected war story: women whose husbands are prisoners in Germany house German officers as occupiers; add community sentiment and stir. It’s fairly predictable. But “Storm in June” is amazing in its details of what human hearts turn into when combined with fear, breakdown of social order, and a few sudden chances to change everything. Nemirovsky saw through a lot of veneers.

The manuscripts were finally published in this century, when her daughter opened the suitcase and read them, realized they were novels rather than journals, and sent them to Denoel, a large publishing house. “Storm in June” is pretty much genius, making you laugh and sob at the same time.

How many people did we lose in that storm, who would have made us laugh or cry today?

 

The People in 306

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Every year, Jack and I emcee the Sycamore Shoals Celtic Festival, in gratitude of which they give us a small stipend and a big room in a grand hotel.

For the past four years it’s been the Carnegie, a nice place in JC that features huge bathrooms, glorious hallway chandeliers, and paper-thin walls. Last night Jack and I settled into our room with the requisite Indian take-out meal from Sahib’s, mid-term grading for me and Scottish political sites for Jack.

About half an hour later, we glanced at each other. Strange noises were coming from the hallway. It sounded as though a child were throwing up.

“No, that’s the room beside us,” Jack said, as I started to open the door leading to the hall. He indicated the wall with a flick of his head.

I stood at the point where the noise seemed loudest and listened again. The soft, ah-ah-ah gasps escalated to something like crying.

“This kid is in pain,” I said to Jack. “Do you hear an adult in the room? Should we knock?”

At that moment a male voice said, “Good girl, do it again” and my whole assessment of the situation shifted. Jack and I shot back from the wall as though, well, shot.

The voices continued, rumbling, mumbling, giggling, and that high, heated shrieking the gasps had turned into. There were sounds of spanking, and choking. “Are you all right?” “Oh yeah, that was amazing!”

Jack and I glanced at each other, at the clock by our bed (10:45), at our empty, neatly made bed, and busted up laughing. At some point marriages turn into “Let’s get a good night’s sleep” instead of “I’ll have what she’s having.”

And that’s okay. Don’t get the wrong idea; sex shared with the right person has no equal. But it also has no need of broadcasting. Sex just doesn’t sound like much fun at all when you’re not the one having it. Erotic asphyxiation is definitely off my list. She sounded like a poodle with asthma.

So is the Carnegie Hotel, perhaps. Next year we’re asking for the Comfort Inn. Fare-thee-well, paper thin walls that bring more than someone else’s TV into your life.