middleagedmiddlechild.

I recently read a book that was part investigative journalism, part literary criticism, part feminist meditation, and part motherhood memoir. Now I’ve read another one.

I’m glad that I was not familiar with the story of Marguerite de la Rocque, otherwise I might have been frustrated by how often the author centers herself, or how often she calls previous evidence in the question. This herky jerky style and approach turns out to be the one that mirrors the action of writing, and wondering, and drafting better than any “straight” history or memoir could have. Surprises land hard, both personal and academic; blessings abound (just the right library recommended to find just the right centuries-old map). 

Ramqvist has several challenges in the telling. She must navigate the paths taken by three previous authors who have told their versions of the story, sometimes centuries earlier, and thus, sometimes restricted by personal connection to Marguerite, by connection to the uncle that banished her, by connection to centuries-old ideas of propriety & euphemism. She also cannot help but read her current self through the lenses of her selves — as a mother, as a Swede, as a once-young woman making risky choices with dangerous men.

What was most pleasurable about the book turned out to be this personal reading of the self. Her travels & frustrations with her teenage daughter reveal a lot about the blessings Marguerite lost as a mother, a lot about Ramqvist’s own understandings of independence and adventure, a lot about how we read the rare stories extant of famous women from centuries ago.

_{This novel was translated by Saskia Vogel, a writer whose translation of Jessica Schiefauer‘s Girls Lost is also really good.}

I’ve seen Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Française popping up on my Twitter feed for a long time. The colorized cover photo, which originally I thought was a little sentimental, turns out to be precise & appropriate. Though it’s got a cast of dozens, the heart of the novel is the drama of a man & a woman in a time we think we know well (WWII). The photo shows a man & woman of a certain age … no longer young, but still full of vigor & life & possibility, and in this case, full of uncertainty. They’re united but looking in different directions; I’d say that they’re in an embrace, except for the fact that each of them has a hand free.

It’s that kind of novel. One of uncertainties during a time of turmoil in Europe, here, in occupied France in 1940 & 1941. Nemirovsky, a Jewish novelist living in Paris, begins Suite Française with a kaleidoscopic energy. The Germans have moved from air bombing France and are marching on it, swiftly and successfully.

The opening part of the two-part novel focuses on several different families & citizens fleeing Paris with what little they have, with what little they can not bear to leave behind. Their fates are as varied and as shocking as … well, the fates of refugees in a time of war. Nemirovsky makes these continental events domestic & interpersonal — the wounds & kindnesses, the good luck & the bad fortune. The struggle for shelter & bread, for petrol & a shave.

The second part of the two-part novel focuses on a single occupied village, tracking the uneasy routines that emerge over months. Soldiers billeted in private homes; French officials compelled to (& enjoying the safety) of collaborating with the occupying German forces; children & survivors of the Great War dazzled openly & quietly (respectively) by the precision & strength of the Germans. And finally the women, performing obedience and politeness, while meditating in interior monologues about the beauty and natural novelty of young men in the village — their village’s men having left for war months and months earlier. Nemirovsky centers the drama of part two on the newlywed Bruno (a German officer skilled at music and eager to make the occupation civilized) and the newlywed Lucile (a girl from the forests waiting for a husband that doesn’t love her to return, enamored with the walks & talks, the talent & promise of Bruno).

Nemirovsky meant for this to be a five-part series. She was arrested in 1942  “and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For sixty-four years, this novel remained hidden and unknown.” As a result, the novel ends with an unintended verisimilitude — none of the characters know and the author cannot hint at what is in store for these characters, for their way of life on part two’s last pages, set in July 1942 as the Germans leave the village for the Russian front.

I have heard great things about Betty Smith’s autobiographical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn all my life—the book and the movie. I finally got around to this readable, accessible, emotionally & historically nimble story.

To say that it’s a coming of age story is accurate, to a point, as accurate as it is to say that it’s a family story or a bootstraps story or a … well, we’d call it historical fiction now, but it was written originally with the psychological & emotional precision that the best stories have.

Betty Smith shapes the protagonist Francie & her family through the lens of what Toni Morrison once called Homeric fairness. That is, it is a story told bravely & honestly, a growing up ennobled & complicated by surprising empathy & honesty. Francie endures the fact that she is less loved by her mother than her brother is — but Smith depicts the mother chides her disarmingly to the effect of, “Oh, honey, don’t make a fuss — you know that he needs my love & support more than you do.” And you believe the mother. Francie bristles at the indignities & consequences of her father’s drunkenness — but Smith also centers the father’s love & struggles, his talent & tragedy.

I could go on. There’s no single antagonist, no enemy (unless it is poverty). There is instead the ambiguities of life & the everyday heroism of love & hard work, the gentle daily blessings that get people through the persistent daily burdens & losses.

It is a beautiful & hopeful book, made all the more beautiful by the direct style (which has moving flourishes & shifts in POV) and made all the more hopeful by the realization that we are not alone, or at least not alone for long.