A Perfect Way to Spend a Lazy....

Dimanche and Other Stories – Irène Némirovsky, trans. Bridget Patterson

Original Title: Dimanche et autres nouvelles

            Dimanche is a posthumous collection of ten short stories by Irène Némirovsky.  Némirovsky, a French writer in the 1930’s and 1940’s of Ukrainian-Jewish origins, was murdered at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.  If you still can't place her, she’s currently probably best known as the author of Suite Française, originally planned to be a series of novels, which was only recently discovered after well after her death and subsequently released in 2007.  

            Written between 1934 and her death in 1942 the short stories in Dimanche are well-written pieces, with Némirovsky focusing on various recurring themes: family relationships, class, love.  For example, in the titular Dimanche [Sunday], shows the tale of a mother and her young-adult daughter’s similarities and differences in their love lifes.  With Liens du sang [Flesh and Blood], we see the interworking of a family of a mother, three brothers, a sister, and their spouses and how they both relate to each other and cope in the face of adversity.  

            However, the pieces were clearly not written in a vacuum.  Némirovsky’s mentions or references of the coming war repeatedly  (though sometimes casually) in these stories, such as in L’inconnu [The Unknown Soldier] where two brothers serving in the French Army share a story from the front or in Monsueur Rose, where a couple contemplate the war and the possible destruction of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.   

            While I rarely read short stories, but I’m very glad I did in this case.  They’re mostly memorable stories, sometimes thought provoking stories which will stay with you. 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.