“Dimanche” - A Short Story by Irene Nemirovsky - 1934- translated by Bridget Patterson 2015

 

“Dimanche” - A Short Story by Irene Nemirovsky - 1934- translated by Bridget Patterson 2015

Website for Paris in July 2021- Hosted by Thyme for Tea 

This is part of my tenth year of participation in Paris in July 

Suite Francaise is the acknowledged master work of Iréne Nemirovsky.  I first read this book during Paris in July in 2015.  I loved that book so much that I added her to my read all I can list.  Since then I have read and posted on eleven of her novels and four short stories.  On her way to Auschwitz in a cattle car she carried with her a copy of the notebook of Katherine Mansfield.  She died there after a month at age forty.  She was a very prolific writer with about a novel a year.  The Germans cheated the Reading Life world out of at least thirty wonderful works.  I cannot find a way to forgive or forget this.

I am happy to be able to post on one of her set in Paris short stories “Dimanche” - (“Sunday” in English) from 1934.  The chief characters are a Middle aged Parisian couple, married for twenty years plus, and their twenty year old daughter Nadine.  The father has long been a philander, making little effort to hide things from his wife.  As he story opens he gives her a vague explanation as to why he Will not be home tonight.  His wife wonders who he is meeting.  She thinks of The days when he once had a passion for her,  

Nadine has her first love.  He seems like her father in that The man laughs  when he tells her he sees other women.  Nadine wonders if her mother, who she sees as past the years of passion, has any clue how she feels.

Nemirovsky skillfully lets us see the family dynamics, a younger daughter and the servants.

To those new to Nemirovsky start with Suite Francaise.  

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and immigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne in Paris, she began to write and swiftly achieved success with David Golder, which was followed by more than a dozen other books. Throughout her lifetime she published widely in French newspapers and literary journals. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. More than sixty years later, Suite Française was published posthumously for the first time in 2006. - from Vintage Press 

Irène Némirovsky - Two Short Stories Set in Pre-WWII Paris by the author of Suite Francaise

Irène Némirovsky (born 1903, Kiev, Ukraine, died 1942 in Nazi concentration camp) is a tragic figure.

Born to Jewish parents in the Ukraine, then part of the Russian empire, her family fled in 1917 at the time of the Russian Revolution.   They spent a year in Finland then settled permanently in Paris.   Nemirovsky attended the Sorbonne, converted to Catholicism, and at eighteen published her first short  story, set in Paris and written in French.   She soon became a highly regarded writer and a very successful movie was made from her novel David Golder.   Upon the invasion of Paris by the Germans she was sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland to die in the gas chambers there.  

I am very glad I have at last read some of her work, two set in Paris circa 1939 stories, both centering on affluent Parisian women.  Both focus on the relationship of a woman in her mid forties and her early 20s daughter.  Parents in these circumstances will see the reality behind these stories. 

"Dimanche"  ("Sunday") is a fascinating multilayered story centering on the relationship of a 45 year old woman to her 20 year old daughter.  I was brought to mind the works of Colette as I read this for its very perceptive view of the mirrors in which we see each other.  The daughter is having an affair with an older obviously married man and her mother sees heartbreak coming and her own past in the emotions of her daughter.  The off stage father has been having casual affairs for years.   The daughter sees her mother as beyond romantic feelings due to her age and jealous of her youth while the mother secretly yearns for passion and knows her daughter is being used and treated as a fool by her lover.  

"Those Happy Shores" also centers on the dynamics of a mother - daughter relationship.   The daughter is around 20, the mother in her mid-forties.  It is much like "Dimanche" in that it centers on the pairs perceptions of each other.   The daughter is preparing to go out for an evening with her friends and the mother is put off by their tawdry appearance and mode of attire while the daughter tells her she will be out late and not to worry.   

If you want to read these stories, download a sample of Dimanche and Other Stories by Irene Nemirovsky from Amazon.   

I really hope to read at least Suite Francaise one day.   

This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will fund lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.