All Our Worldly Goods by Irène Némirovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Totally worth the £2 I spent on this book! I have read a lot of stories but very few have been this powerful. It is like Upstairs Downstairs (both the 1970's series and the new ones) combined with Romeo and Juliet' 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'The Diary of a Young Girl.'

Set between the two wars, All Our Worldly Goods is the story of love, tyranny, jealous mothers, quarrelsome mothers-in-law, of how history repeats itself and how children inevitably become more and more like their own parents. Not a typical World War story and not a conventional family novel either, it is a beautifully paced tale of the resilience of human spirit.

Irène Némirovsky doesn't waste much time on lengthy explanations of her characters and her way of familiarising you to the plot of the story is also pretty unusual. Years pass by, characters grow, nothing is romanticised or embellished. It is simple, everyday and in your face. The narrative of the story captures you and transports you to a whole new world of possibility and impossibility where nothing is predictable and you're always at the edge of your seat.

As I said before, the story can't be classified as a a typical tragedy, a romance or a war/family novel. Written with inventive wit and a unique, bittersweet poetic tone, All Our Worldly Goods is a story of how life is-sharp, full of surprises and as unpredictable as weather. DEFINITELY A GOOD READ!

View all my reviews