""I wanted to read Suite Francaise as I've heard a lot about it. The New York Times gave a front page book review, and it's a book about World War II very early before people realized that it was going to be a world war, that it was going to change the whole world. And it was written by a woman who was very successful in her native France but who had Jewish ancestry, which is a big problem, and the whole book is about the denial of what was going to happen to people.
Nemirovsky had no reason to love the Germans, and so it's wonderful that she could write with such generosity and such compassion, wanting to know as an author how these things - these terrible acts of collaboration - could happen.
I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in World War II, who is interested in families. My own family was German from a small town in southern Germany called Karlsruhe, and my Tanta Ana sheltered a Dutch prisoner of war who'd escaped when his munitions factory exploded; and she sheltered him for 2 -- years. And we didn't talk much about that growing up, but I understood - I didn't realize how rare it was; and reading this book gives me a little insight into how extremely rare it was for people to be that brave.
Reading the book gave me a lot of insight into - and compassion and to help people of all sides suffer during that war. I'd be happy to give Suite Francaise five stars."
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