David Golder

If Suite Francaise was known more for its chequered 64-year journey of as a manuscript seeking a publisher, David Golder is the book that launched Nemirowsky's career and is a much more powerful novel. A short engrossing semi-autobiographical read, David Golder proves that good novels do not need sympathetic characters in order to entertain and enlighten. Everyone in this book is a pretty wretched person, almost caricaturish in their enslavement by money, except perhaps for the young Jewish man who is the last to see Golder alive, but even there we do not know if he will also "take the money and run" and not deliver on his promise to the dying anti-hero. Golder is a tragic character, unbscrupulous in his drive to acquire wealth due to his impoverished origins, but also the only one who sees through lucre's fleeting nature, and is weighed by the burden of the breadwinner, while his family members lavishly spend, cheat on him, and openly blame him for falling ill and not being able to keep the money machine running. I also liked the fact that the business deals that are central to Golder's character but could be boring in their minutia, were concluded off-stage, except for the final negotiation where Golder adopts Russian negotiating tactics (temper tantrums and threats to walk out) with his counterparts - the Russians themselves. Short chapters, incisive dialogue that resemble lines from a play as they paint action and character, a tight plot that moves to is inevitable end, and the gratings of Golder's failing heart, grip the reader in a page-turner. Having recently visited Auschwitz, the message was re-iterated while reading this book that the world lost many brilliant minds and artists in that holocaust - Nemirowsky: reluctant Jew, assimilated Frenchwoman and Catholic convert, included. Shane Joseph[...]

Irene Nemirovsky's brilliant first book (originally published in France in 1929) deals with the eponymous businessman, a ruthless man in his late sixties who has amassed an enormous fortune, but who increasingly faces a brutal reversal of chance. Hated by his wife and daughter (who only expect money from him), with a heart condition that augurs him just a few months of life, his business deals collapsing, he looks at his life and sees that he has never loved anyone, except a daughter that may not be really his. Reportedly autobiographical (Nemirovsky was the estranged daughter of an exiled Russian Jewish banker; she could be the inspiration for Golder's daughter Joyce), what is a bit disturbing about the book is how Golder's greed and the materialism of his wife and daughter are seen as an exclusively Jewish trait; in a post-Holocaust world, this gives the book a strange feeling as if it was written by a very talented antisemite (paradoxically, Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz).

This is a very short but staggeringly powerful book which made me gasp with its admission of sheer unadulterated greed. David Golder was a Russian immigrant who rose to a place in the financial pages of the world's oil business. He was ruthless, ambitious and completely amoral, married to a grasping woman and father to a spoilt daughter who loved her father only for the money he gave her. It is a desolate read without any love or redeeming features in its characters who worship only money and the privileges it brings. I couldn't feel any sympathy for him, even on his deathbed, so I'm glad that it was such a quick read as it made me feel too depressed with its bleakness and the pervading sense of hopelessness.

I think I read a much older translation of David Golder. I have a feeling the latest translation is better. This book is not easy to find, as are other Nemirovsky translations. The world we see in this novel is one of money. Although it does bring some initial happiness to poor Golder, it ends up ruining his whole life, his marriage, his businesses, and his relationship to his one and only daughter, Joyce. She loves him only for his money of course, as does Gloria, his wife. It's easy to see real-life parallels of David Golder in our present world - the upper middle-class, celebrity worship, and the general culture. Highly recommended.