Customer Reviews

All Our Worldly Goods

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Two schools of thought. (1) A work of literature is a self-contained entity and you need not know a thing about the author's life in order to read, understand, and appreciate it. (2) Or, in order to understand a work of literature, you must first know the author's biography. I guess I'm a believer of the second position. Don't we need to know about the lives of Emily Dickinson, Poe, Hemingway, and Hawthorne in order to appreciate their writings even more? It was, therefore, very strange to read this slim novel by Irene Nemirovsky. She was a Russian Jew who died in Auschwitz in 1942. Yet there is nothing in this novel to indicate any of this. It's as if she were an outsider who understood everything around her even if it wasn't her life she was writing about.

We have two middle-class families in a small French town near the Belgian border. We get a multi-generational account of their complicated involvements with each other. Time passes quickly...1910-1940s. Two world wars disrupt their lives. The writing is often gorgeous, with lots of splendid descriptions of nature. The understanding of love and family and relationships is profoundly explored and presented. There is joy, there is sorrow. There is despair, there is hope. I kept reading, wondering how much of what happens to these characters might have happened to Nemirovsky and her family. But I got no clue. These characters are Catholic, not Jewish. Although she died in 1942, she seems to anticipate events of 1944. I kept asking myself, "Did I read this out of a sense of duty to honor someone who died in Auschwitz? Would I have read this book if I had not known her fate?" Yes. This is a very well-written novel that gives a moving portrait of one small slice of French society. I am deeply saddened that the author died the way she did. I wish she could have lived decades longer and written more novels. Hers is one of those sad stories of which we need to be reminded. And this novel is a wonderful testament to her artistic skills.

Irène Némirovsky finished writing this epic love story at a time when the Vichy government was escalating its anti-Semitic restrictions. She had achieved fame writing brilliant novels about Russian Jewish émigrés. But Jewish writers no longer dared present their readers with Jewish characters. Very soon they would be forbidden to publish at all. Némirovsky did manage to get this novel serialized, but not under her own name.

All Our Worldly Goods is set in rural Catholic France - in a society as familiar to Némirovsky as the Russian Jewish community. She loved France and considered herself thoroughly French. She could write as bitingly and insightfully as Balzac or Flaubert about the smug provincial bourgeoisie.

The story opens in the little town of Saint-Elme. The leading families live in solid houses and have solid investments. They hold grudges against their neighbors forever while despising anyone born elsewhere. Their world is serene, their children obedient. That is, until young Pierre Hardelot and Agnès Florents fall in love.

Marriage between these young people is impossible because of subtle but ironclad class distinctions. Yet marry they do. Their disorderly conduct is mirrored by a crumbling world order. We follow the couple and their family into two world wars. Némirovsky shows us a chaotic, battle-torn France that leaves our ears ringing with cannon fire. We watch Pierre and Agnès grow old, but never any less in love.

I loved everything about this book: the incisive prose, the caustic observations, the terrific storytelling and the delicate romanticism. Readers new to Némirovsky might do well to start here, before going back to her earlier, darker fiction. The book cover says this novel prefigures Suite Française, but it's complete and, as I see it, fascinating in its own right.

All Our Worldly Goods is a strangely hopeful book from an author in a hopeless situation. In 1942, a year after All Our Worldly Goods was serialized, Irène Némirovsky died at Auschwitz. The novel in book form was published posthumously in 1947. This new 2011 edition is beautifully translated by Sandra Smith.

ALL OUR WORLDLY GOODS is another beautiful and deeply-affecting masterpiece from the extraordinary oeuvre of Irene Nemirovsky. I was thrilled to find this 2008 edition translated from the original French into English magnificently by Sandra Smith. I have loved Irene Nemirovsky's fluid, intimate prose since first discovering her SUITE FRANCAISE and FIRE IN THE BLOOD several years ago. Once again I have been stimulated by her subtle psychological and social observations, moved by the amplitude of her narrative, and awe-struck by her perfectly poised prose.

"They were together, so they were happy." The first sentence of ALL OUR WORLDLY GOODS introduces with simplicity, elegance and rigor of perspective her prismatic theme concerning love in its many facets... married love, familial love, forbidden love, unrequited love, love for home, love for community, love for country.

The novel begins in the autumn of 1911, with idyllic weather at the French seaside overlooking the English Channel. "A profound sense of tranquility reigned over them, and over the sea, and over the world." Yet this is a subtle irony for the winds of change are about to blow and the world will convulse with war.

ALL OUR WORLDLY GOODS is a clear-eyed, slow burning meditation written with unwavering lucidity in brilliantly polished form. Nemirovsky, who herself lived in France until her 1942 deportation and murder in Auschwitz, draws upon and fictionalizes actual history while it was happening all around her. She applies its effects upon her fictional Hardelot family, four generations of wealthy French provincial bourgeoisie who must endure two world wars, catastrophic international events, the destruction of their homeland, the decline of their class and the loss of their fortune.

More than the broad-scale turbulence and mayhem of war, it is the nuanced and complicated intimate lives of her characters which engage Nemirovsky in ALL OUR WORLDLY GOODS. Her focus is love and all its wonder, pain, frustration, anguish, exhilaration and joy. Can love for spouse, parents, children, family, community, country survive war? Invasion? A stifling bourgeois value system? Vanishing family fortunes? Greed? Jealousy? Meanness? Vanity? Egotism? Fate?

"France was a tableau of heart-rending despair. Everywhere there were ruins, everywhere anxiety, mourning, tears and a sort of bewilderment that weighed heavily on people's souls. They went through the motions of living, without truly believing they were alive."

Does love have the power to endure? Nemirovsky's answer is a passionate, resonating - yes. Yet it takes invasion, war, world catastrophe for her characters to understand that. It takes contrast and comparison for them to know the truth, to realize the pretensions of society, to understand the workings of the human heart.

To her penetrating prose Nemirovsky applies courage and selflessness, dignity and tolerance, devotion and faith, with a steady rhythm of complexity and an underlying beat of crisis. The story of the Herdelot family is emotionally sophisticated and dramatically complicated. As cultivated people, the Hardelots are multifaceted and unpredictable, complex and contradictory. They factor the bourgeois state of mind: they cling to their possessions, their comforts, their place in society, their perception of who they are. They believe in the protections of society and they irrationally disbelieve anything to the contrary. Death happens to someone else, not to one's self. It takes the violence of war or other catastrophic upheavals for the Hardelots to realize their own vulnerabilty, to imagine they themselves can be killed, to feel the fear of death. It takes disaster to enlighten and empower the proud and morally ambiguous Hardelot family.

"The Hardelots had lived for this factory. They had married ugly women; they had skimped and counted every last penny; they had been rich and had enjoyed fewer pleasures than the poor. They had stifled their children's interests, thwarted their loves. All this for the factory, for their possessions, for something that was, to their eyes, more durable and faithful than love, women or their own children."

Through each generation, the Hardelots must feel a mighty force beyond their understanding and control, a force which sweeps them up and knocks them down, only to sweep them up and knock them down again and again. History does indeed repeat itself and for the Hardelots it does so with a fierce and brutal rapidity.

"The past and the present were strangely and sadly confused in her mind. There was no distinct break: the hopes, habits, feelings, desires of the past clung to her like a bleeding limb that is being amputated, but whose nerves flesh, muscles remain attached to the body."

ALL OUR WORLDLY GOODS is as sensitive and subtle as it is powerful and profound. It is a transcendental reading experience which is ultimately optimistic and deeply poignant. "... she no longer felt any pain, any weariness. She felt that she had reaped her harvest, gleaned all the wealth, all the love, the laughter and the tears that God owed her..."

ALL OUR WORLDLY GOODS concludes with a poignant irony however, not for its characters but for its author. Irene Nemirovsky could not know then, upon completion of this masterpiece, what we her readers know now... that the Nazis would end her brilliant literary career in Paris, arrest her for her Jewish ancestry, separate her from her loved ones and all her worldly goods, deport her to Auschwitz, and murder her in the gas chamber.

This was an engaging book set in France during the period between WWI and WWII. Although it follows the lives of two families during and between the wars, it was as much about the experience of living through that particular era as it was about the characters' specific experiences. It captured a bit of what life was like for everyone in that place at that time.

It was a fairly quick read. I was particularly impressed by Némirovsky's description, as WWII was approaching, of the state of mind of those who had lived through WWI. There were some touching moments in the story of Agnes and Pierre, who grow into an old couple during the course of the book. A worthwhile read.

SPOILERS

I realize that this novel is quite short (264 pages) but the feel of Nemirovsky's prose is epic as she tells this generational story of several families in France between the wars. Her writing is stunningly beautiful and her range as a writer is very wide: she can be artistically flowery and expressive when need be (this is never overdone, in my opinion), and yet she shows a stark realism that is quite shocking to the reader. This combination makes for both an exciting and beautiful reading experience. I loved "Suite Francaise" but along with many other readers, I recognized the obvious incompleteness of that text. This book, which narrates the events of World War II up to 1940, feels a bit incomplete as well since we know the history of the war's conclusion and there are some characters whose lives are not fully explained at the end. However, the harmonious ending between Pierre and Agnus is fully satisfying to the reader and the novel as a whole, then, seems complete since they are the main characters of the novel. If you read novels to find out what happens to characters, this book may be a tad disappointing, but if you read novels to appreciate the beauty of language, then this book is for you. It is a literary gem. Credit must be given to Sandra Smith whose translation is top notch. If you loved "Suite Francaise", I believe that you will greatly enjoy this gorgeous novel by Nemirovsky. (By the way, I enjoyed this novel much more than "Fire in the Blood", which I thought was good but not great).
Highly Recommended!

I fell in love with Irene Nemirovsky's prose when I read "Suite Francaise," and was delighted to find "All Our Worldy Goods." Both books were published posthumously, as the author died at Auschwitz.

In this book, Nemirovsky brings us four generations of the Hardelot family of Saint-Elme. Beginning in 1910 with Pierre and Agnes, both engaged to others in arranged marriages, deciding to run away and marry for love and ending in the middle of the German occupation, the tale shows the French middle class in all of their foibles. Pierre's father is a wealthy industrialist who wants him to marry the monied Simone Renaudin in order to keep the business afloat. Simone, upon being jilted, is determined to ruin the Hardelot family. Against the backdrop of two world wars, deprivation and restoration, the family saga plays out to a satisfying conclusion.

The story is exceptionally well-written, with an underlying compassion and humor that involves the reader in the Hardelot and Renaudin households as though they are well-known neighbors.

Although this book was a contemporary piece for Nemirovsky, fans of historical fiction, as well as fans of literary fiction, as sure to enjoy it.

(Review based on uncorrected advance proof.)

Anyone who enjoyed Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Française will surely love All Our Worldly Goods just as much. In both books Nemirovsky's writing is incredibly beautiful and gracefully poignant. Though the original French must be even better, these translations by Sandra Smith are wonderful.

Nemirovsky was killed at Auschwitz before she could finish Suite Française, but All Our Worldly Goods is a complete novel. It's set in France from 1911, just before the start of WWI, to 1940, shortly after the beginning of WWII, and it tells the tangled story of three families from a small village. Pierre Hardelot's family owns the village factory and at the opening of the book he is set to do what his family wants and marry Simone Renaudin, an orphaned and wealthy heiress. To the shock of all he breaks off this engagement to marry for love. Agnes Florent's family were only brewers, so while the Florents and the Hardelots are friendly no one expected them to be united by a wedding. Pierre's rejection of Simone and devoted love for Agnes start a family feud whose ramifications continue as the world is upended and their village is destroyed by war, painstakingly reconstructed and then razed by war again.

All Nemirovsky's characters are well-drawn rounded individuals, sometimes selfish but deeply loving, neither heroes or villains. They have had to rebuild their lives before, so while the novel ends with WWII still raging the tone of the book is more hopeful than despairing.

In 1914 a young couple defies their parent's wishes and marry for love instead of money. How do Pierre and Agnes fare when they strike out on their own in Paris? Well, World War I interrupts their lives as Pierre is sent off to war. The story takes us through the lives of these 2 French families who live through the horrors of two world wars. This is a quick, enjoyable read that has pain, loss, heartbreak, love and hope.

Nemirovsky has been enormously popular since her elderly daughters
arranged for her incomplete final novel, "Suite Francaise" to be
translated into English and published here sixty-five years after the author' death, in a concentration camp. She was a very popular writer, greatly esteemed by critics, in between-the-wars France. Nemirovsky has a fluid, simple style that creates a contrast with the people and the society she describes. "All Our Worldly Goods" begins in 1911 and continues until the beginning of World War II. The author's French bourgeoisie tend to be smug and rigid, their lives structured and constrained by strict convention and concern over what their extended families and neighbors will think. In this context love flares up and quickly settles down again to be quiet and contained. War, the other theme, can't be prepared for, even though it looms inevitably, it also seems impossible that it will really come and destroy everything.

Even though I didn't identify very much with any of the characters,
the book still grabbed me and made me keep reading. Most family sagas
are a bit overwrought -- this one is quiet and cool, despite the
dramatic times in which it's set. It's simple and surprisingly short.

I look forward to reading more of her books. Anybody interested in French culture and that era would find this book interesting.

This is a sweet, sad, nostalgic, and unexpectedly uplifting tale of love in the turmoil of the two world wars. It put me a lot in the mind of William Trevor's Fools of Fortune (Penguin Classics) - although this book was, I think, significantly less tragic, it shares a lot of the same themes of families that seemingly can't help but be entangled by births, marriages, and deaths, and of people - particularly young people - whose lives are swept up by forces they cannot control.

Reading this book, you feel the horrible and wonderful sweep of history and fate. Wonderful in that love, however embattled, seems to find its home over and over again in this book (lovers find each other, children are born, people are forgiven) - horrible in that the modern reader knows the devastation of each world war looming around the corner.

Knowing, too, that Nemirovsky herself was a victim of the holocaust - she died in a concentration camp in 1942 - I felt her own death looming as the events of the book marched steadily towards the second world war. The reader feels the weight of the war and its impact not just on the main characters, but on the world - or at least on France. But even as such huge, sweeping events set the tone - and much of the course - of the book, Nemirovsky's writing is still tenderly evocative of the individual experience.

The author has a substantial gift for understanding people and writing convincingly and compassionately about their emotions and experiences. Even with characters that are selfish, or cruel, or dishonest, Nemirovsky writes with an understanding eye. It's easy to present the big brute of the family who rules the roost; it's not easy to show the reader why they are the way they are, and even make you sympathize with them a little.

Nemirovsky uses simple language to capture the strange core of life and love - one favorite passage, though short and simple, is Charles Hardelot's titular line:

"I place the happiness of these children in the hands of Providence, but I know how fate defines happiness, in its divine wisdom: worry, anxiety, endurance, our worldly goods..."

I'm not sure in this passage if Charles means that worry, anxiety, endurance, etc become a necessary part of love, because they are a necessary part of life, as love weaves itself through hardship - or if happiness and love cost "all our worldly goods." Or, as T.S. Eliot would say, "costing not less than everything."

I haven't read Suite Francaise, but I feel that All Our Worldly Goods definitely stands on its own. I'm excited to own this book and look forward to rereading it, especially reading it aloud with my husband. I can't recommend this book enough.