Product Description

In haunting ways this wonderful, compelling novel prefigures "Suite Francaise" and some of the themes of Nemirovsky's great unfinished sequence of novels. "All Our Worldly Goods", though, is complete, and exquisitely so - a perfect novel in its own right. First published in France in 1947, after the author's death, it is a gripping story of family life and starcrossed lovers, of money and greed, set against the backdrop of France from 1911 to 1940 between two terrible wars. Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and the family patriarch, the tyrannical industrialist Julien Hardelot, provoking a family feud which cascades down the generations.This is "Balzac" or "The Forsyte Saga" on a smaller, more intimate scale, the bourgeoisie observed close-up with Nemirovsky's characteristically sly humour and clear-eyed compassion. Full of drama and heartbreak, telling observation of the devastating effects of two wars on a small town and an industrial family, this is Nemirovsky at the height of her powers. The exodus and flow of refugee humanity through the town in both wars foreshadows "Suite Francaise", but differently, because this is Northern France, near the Somme, and the town itself is twice razed. Taut, evocative and beautifully paced, the novel points up with heartbreaking detail and clarity how close were those two wars, how history repeated itself, tragically, shockingly...It opens in the Edwardian era, on a fashionable Normandy beach, and ends with a changed world, under Nazi occupation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7271 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
rich in illuminating vignettes...Nemirovsky...makes us see...it's a work of great intelligence and fine sensibility' --The Scotsman

Review
`Nemirovsky writes with understanding about the society she describes'.

Review
`It is a resolutely optimistic story, at once sensual, sentimental and spiritual'

Customer Reviews

From Normandy beach to Nazi occupation
All Our Worldly Goods is the story of the Hardelots, a family of industrialists living in Saint-Elme, Northern France. The family has established their factory and the local population, who provide all the necessary labour, and all are ruthlessly ruled over by ageing patriarch, Julien Hardelot.

The story begins in 1911 and follows the lives of Pierre, grandson of Julien, and Agnes Florent, the daughter of a local widow. Pierre and Agnes are childhood sweethearts and deeply in love, but this is still a time and a place where the petit-Bourgeois arranged marriages for their offspring and Agnes is not deemed the social equal of Pierre. Pierre is engaged to Simone Renaudin, whose dowry brings the Renaudin fortune to the Hardelots, and one can sense Julien's impatience at getting access to it so that he can invest it in the business. The engagement dinner duly takes place and the future is planned and predictable, just as Saint-Elme and Julien desire it to be.

Suddenly, however, everything changes when Pierre and Agnes meet alone in nearby woods. Knowing how this will be judged by the high-minded moral standards in Saint-Elme, Madame Florent visits Pierre's parents where she mourns the loss of her daughter's prospects in marriage. Pierre overhears the heated conversation and steps in, informing them that he will marry Agnes. Oblivious to his parent's entreaties not to, he will not be dissuaded and their lives are set on a very different course. True to form, Julien disowns his grandson and, feeling their future lies elsewhere, Pierre and Agnes move away to Paris. From then on, our story follows Pierre and Agnes and the fate of the Hardelots, as well as Simone and the town of Saint-Elme, through the First World War, that period entre deux guerres, and into 1940 and the midst of the second great conflict.

This is an exquisite, intimate portrait of love blind to any consequences, of commerce and greed, and of a society at its snobbish peak razed to the ground, literally, not once, but twice by the horrors and realities of war. One cannot help but be aware of Nemirovsky's own life when she portrays the French refugees fleeing the invading German army, redolent of her own family's flight from Russia, and yet it is not a story without hope. Love can overcome despair and give one the strength needed when such awful history unbelievably repeats itself, even reconciliation is possible.

It is a beautiful novel.

Mix Maupassant and Balzac
This book is one of Irene Nemirovsky's best, akin to a shorter version of her lamentably uncompleted "Suite Francaise." All human life is here, from the effects of petty family jealousies to the devastating impact of two World wars on a small community in Northern France. The author's style and subject matter remind me of the best of Maupassant and of Balzac.

less of the passion
Most people reading this novel will have read Suite Francaise, and so like me they may think it disappointing. It lacked the passion and intesnity which cocooned SF, beacause most of us already knew the cirumstnces in which SF was written - and survived. The intensity was not there in this novel, and so perhaps wrongly, this reader at least felt let down. But it is remarkable how Nemirovsky does manage to convey a Trollopian family history with depth and human emotion.