This book was a huge surprise to me. I have read Suite Francaise but not any of Nemirovsky's other works, and was unaware of this work by her daughter. Read with #nyrbwomen23

A very moving, sad, and fascinating memoir/biography of Irène Némirovsky written by the daughter who was 5 at the time her mother was arrested. When Gille wrote this, she was middle-aged and had outlived her mother by a decade.

While this is "imagined"--and is the kind of thing that usually bothers me--it is not unsourced. Gille had her mother's journals as well as novels at her disposal, as well as the works of others (all cited in the Acknowledgements), as well as the memory of her sister, who was 7 years older and had many more memories.

This is so well done, and is both fascinating and hard to read as the reader already knows where it goes. I am sure it was incredibly difficult to write as well. Gille wrote this knowing her parents' naivete (though not her grandfather's--Nemirovsky's father intended to leave for New York and wanted their family to go also, but unexpectedly died before he could leave), and writing it out as she did must have been incredibly difficult but also perhaps cathartic in some way. ( )

Interesting, certainly, and well-written. Yet in a way it felt like being in an old historical building that had been "restored" to its original condition - it might look exactly the same as it used to, but the walls aren't the same walls, the floors aren't the same floors, and the furniture isn't the same furniture. It might be a faithful reproduction, but it isn't authentic.

"In passages where, in another writer's work, we might be overly conscious of the will of the creator, here we are conscious only of the exigencies of the characters. Nothing more clearly reveals the gift of the storyteller." -Jean-Pierre Maxence, on Nemirovsky's writing (193-194)

"To leave this world? But what awaits me?
What could it be, this life beyond?
I would like to go away...But would it be an ending?
This nuisance of a soul, could it be immortal?"
-Tristan Bernard (204) ( )

This elegant book is a fictional memoir of the famous author Irene Nemirovsky written by her daughter, Elisabeth Gille. Nemirovsky was born to a rich family in Kiev, moved to Saint Petersburg and later Moscow, came of age during the tumult of the revolution and finally settled with her family in France. Her books were very popular and much lauded in France and she married and had two daughters. However, because she was Jewish, her friends and admirers began turning on her in the 30’s and 40’s. Irene and her husband Michel were arrested and deported in 1942; both died. Her two children were hidden by friends and survived.

Gille’s Irene is bookish and intelligent but at times selfish and heedless. She loves her caring but perpetually busy father and has an antagonistic relationship with her materialistic mother. The neglectful, greedy mother looms large in Nemirovsky’s fiction and Gille portrays her as a social climbing, frivolous monster. It’s a work of fiction so I don’t know if her mother actually begged Irene to have an abortion so she wouldn’t become a grandmother, but after the war, she turned away her daughter’s orphaned girls and tried to send them to a home for indigent children. The sheltered young Irene quietly rebels by reading inappropriate books and dragging her governesses all over the city, occasionally getting caught in riots. Some of the descriptions of the cities and historical events feel a touch studied, the mentions of Nemirovksy’s books can be a bit obvious and once in a while Gille’s language is overly lyrical but for the most part the prose is elegant and the characterization of Irene is skillful. As the family falls into worrisome circumstances due to the unstable political situation, Irene runs wild. The hedonistic atmosphere of the young people contrasts with the hushed attitude of their parents and seems to infect Irene for much of her life. The first part is written by Irene in 1926 and has a happy ending – her family settled in France, she becomes something of a Francophile, happily marries and finds success with her novel David Golder.

The second part is written by Irene in 1942, when the situation in France was dire for Jews. It’s terribly depressing to read about how Irene’s former friends and publishers coldly ignored her plight or piled fuel into the anti-Semitic fire. Gille has Irene criticizing her former self and aware of the danger but sure that the France that she loves will protect her. In an interview, Gille expresses anger that her mother didn’t leave France when she had the opportunity and this is clearly her way of dealing with it. Irene is forced to confront her Jewish identity head on for the first time. She had a complicated relationship with her identity – it was an accepted fact during her childhood (there were things the family couldn’t do) but not important or observed. As a writer, the focus was more on her Russian roots. Later on, she would criticize Jews who didn’t assimilate in France and wasn’t sure she really wanted a stream of German Jews coming to France. Gille presents a nuanced, not always sympathetic view of Irene here. However, Irene's weaknesses are dwarfed by the impending doom that hangs over the whole section.

While I thought this was a good book, there was something that kept me from being fully engaged – possibly the distance that deliberately or accidentally is inserted into the narrative. This would have been a difficult book to write and Gille notes at the beginning that this was a book that had to be written – she couldn’t stop imagining her mother’s life. She pairs Irene’s story with short paragraphs about her childhood during and after the war. The sometimes too-detailed parts of Irene’s narrative – long descriptions of the cities at the time, Irene’s meetings with history, a large number of cited books – never quite let me forget the author behind the book. ( )

An earnest, inquisitive young woman discovers the works of Brazilian writer Clarice Lespector and tries to become her biggest fan girl in this debut work of fiction. The text itself shies away from calling this a novel and that's an honest assessment. There is no narrative structure, no plot, no conflict outside young Nadila's wishes to be a writer as good as her role model.

In the closing pages, another reason for seeking kinship with the writer is revealed but, as with everything else in this work, nothing comes from it.

And that appears to be the biggest flaw here. Just writing that someone is important to you and quoting from that person doesn't carry much weight. The narrator says she has learned more about herself from the experience of doing this writing, but what that was remains abstract. Lespector wrote abstract pieces herself, in addition to journalistic pieces, but the allure of her work isn't made clear in I'm a Box.

Communicating how she has grown in self-knowledge, and what that might mean to her future, or communicating why Lespector should be read today would have made for a successful work. What is communicated is the earnestness and sincerity of the writer's quest, but the results of that quest remain out of reach. ( )