PositiveThe New York Review of Books...[an] absorbing study. Stimulated by her deep and subtle understanding of the French cultural landscape between the world wars and as stubbornly determined as a detective, she applied herself, through a close reading of Némirovsky’s work, to examining the experience of this Jewish novelist, Russian-born but French-speaking, on the eve of World War II. She worked relentlessly to disentangle the contradictory, often revised memories that blurred the details of this drama ... Suleiman’s exceptional understanding of both the work and the time led her to echo Primo Levi’s refusal to pass peremptory judgment on people who find themselves in exceptionally difficult situations: 'We should beware of the error of judging eras and places according to the prevailing standards of the here and now.'”
