All Our Worldly Goods reads like a prequel to Suite
Française, but is a perfect novel in its own right.
In haunting ways, this compelling novel prefigures Suite
Française and some of the themes of Némirovsky’s great
unfinished sequence of novels. All Our Worldly Goods,
though, is complete, and exquisitely so — a perfect novel in its
own right. First published in France in 1947, after the author’s
death, it is a gripping story of family life and star-crossed
lovers, set in France between 1910 and 1940.
Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his
parents and the family patriarch, the tyrannical industrialist
Julien Hardelot, provoking a family feud which cascades down the
generations. This is Balzac or The Forsyte Saga on a smaller, more
intimate scale, the bourgeoisie observed close-up, with
Némirovsky’s characteristically sly humour and clear-eyed
compassion. Full of drama and heartbreak, and telling observations
of the devastating effects of two wars on a small town and an
industrial family, Némirovsky is at the height of her
powers.
Taut, evocative and beautifully paced, the novel points out with
heartbreaking detail and clarity how close those two wars were, how
history repeated itself, tragically and shockingly. The story opens
in the Edwardian era, on a fashionable Normandy beach and ends with
a changed world under Nazi occupation.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
