The Mirador: Dreamed Memories of Irene Nemirovsky by her Daughter

This book contains autobiographical material about Gille's mother, Irene Némirovsky, taken from her when still a child and sent to her death in a Nazi concentration camp. These are part real memories and part the dreamed memories of a daughter trying to bring her mother to life inside her heart and her head. I think this is a beautiful book.Scattered among the chapters recounting Irène's life in a mixture of biography, history and fiction, the authoress has written 13 very short chapters (in italics), which constitute the autobiography of her own childhood. These are inserted in chronological order from "March 1937" (when "the child" is born) until "October 1991" when she leaves the story of Irène :"From this point onward, no-one, not even her daughters, can follow."She has written about herself in the third person, “the child”, using light brush-strokes, as it were, just sketching in her own role in this story, avoiding any outpouring of emotion. The effect of these very tight little chapters is poignant:For instance, in the Chapter called simply "October 1942" she writes:“…..the younger girl is proud to parade down the road in total silence, like a princess being escorted to her kingdom. She would like to hold the officers' hands. She knows them: three months earlier, they took her mother away on a trip. But her older sister, who walks beside her, very pale despite the beautiful yellow star sewn onto her lapel, stares down and bites her lips.....”In "January 1943" as they sought shelter from bombardment in Bordeaux she tells:"The child roars with laughter, bouncing up and down under a starry sky.."and in "January 1945"  she recounts how their guardian Julie Dumot was finally able to "exhume" them from hiding, and took them to the door of an elegant house where their grandmother (Irène's mother) had managed to spend the war years untroubled. How their grandmother announced "I don't have any grandchildren" and when informed that the eldest had pneumonia, added "There are clinics for poor children".She describes the two sisters standing on a Paris station platform (September 1945) scanning the faces of the survivors returning from the concentration camps. Once again, the younger child is blithely singing a little nursery rhyme repeating the days of the week, but then she becomes aware of her older sister's suffering  "and worries that, like Anna Karenina, she will slip under the wheels of an oncoming train."This brief, spare autobiography supports the whole book like a fish-bone, and remains, a tiny masterpiece by itself.

Read her mother's book "Suite Francaise", this is an excellent biographical. Really brings her books to a deeper level of understanding.

Irene Nemirovsky was a very well known and distinguished author in Paris when the Nazis invaded France. She hid her children in the country and continued to live in Paris.Shortly thereafter she and her husband were loaded onto cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz where they were killed. This book helped me to feel I got acquainted with Irene Nemirovsky and it shows the horror of the Nazi Final Solution.

Interesting book with a lot of history of WWII and what happened to many people during that time. I found this book very interesting.

I loved this memoir it was also a great insight as to what happened in the war. I loved this book cause you could really feel the pain and hurt of what was going on at that time.

Gorgeous prose. I actually prefer her writing to her mother's. By the way, if you like this book, read "The Hare with Amber Eyes," another gorgeous book about worldly people swept up in tragedy.

Very interesting

Her mother was tragically gassed in Auswhichz; Suite Francais was a classic an unedited War and Peace lost to eons saved by daughter Elizabeth Gile. Her novel here Mirador is excellent.

Excellent book. Well written

This is the report on an exceptional story, the life of Irene Nemirovsky, going form Kiev to paris and Auschvitz. The story is told in a very poetic style, fascinating.

this book is very interesting and I look forward to other books concerning the history of this lady' mother who was a very good author