What sort of savage beast is a banker at bay? Irene Nemirovsky, the author of the acclaimed Suite Francaise, seems to have been in a good situation to tell us. Her father had been a powerful financier who was expelled from Soviet Russia, and her husband banked in France before anti-Jewish policies made his activities (not to mention Nemirovsky’s novels) unacceptable.
Nemirovsky could have been in a better situation to tell the story of David Golder only if she had been a financier herself, and it’s the complex truth that she brings to her titular character that redeems an otherwise unengaged story.
The novel, which follows the twilight of Golder as his career as a financier and a family man follows a series of highs and bottom-scraping lows to its end, was the first of Nemirovsky’s to receive critical acclaim. One can see why the New York Times called her Dostoevsky’s heir in view of her later work and in view of the fact that Golder is very well drawn indeed.
The reader comes away from the novel with an empathy for the beast at its centre, while mystery over his character lingers; we understand him, but we never understand if it was love or ambition that powered his drive to self-destruction.
But while David Golder himself lives, breathes, and dies through the spare and direct narrative, the other characters and objects are just words on a page, only obstacles in his path. Perhaps that’s the point, but such single-minded character studies don’t make for scintillating reading even at the novella length.
With the Suite Francaise in wide distribution, I can only recommend reading or re-reading that for all but the most devoted Nemirovsky fans. Reading this before or instead of the Suite would be like reading Shirley instead of Jane Eyre to get to know Charlotte Bronte. Nonetheless, if you have the time and inclination to get into it, you’ll be treated to a fine portrait of a vicious, animal, yet sympathetic antihero.
David Golder and the Suite Francaise are both published by Vintage and are available in Canada through Random House Canada.
Article comments