“Storm in June” by Irène Némirovsky Translated by Sandra SmithKnopf, 2006

I read an advance reader’s copy of Suite Française in March: it only contained the first section of the two part book (it was meant to be five parts, like a symphony, but Némirovsky was deported to Auschwitz and died before finishing it). “Storm in June,” the story of the Paris evacuation in 1940 and the start of the Nazi occupation, is stunning: the way strangers’ lives intersect, what war brings out in people, how selfishness and self-preservation make people act. The cruelty of Némirovsky’s characters is set off by the beauty of her prose: whether she’s describing the light as it fades on a June evening or the death of an old man, the details are vivid, the story well-paced.