Enjoyed this beautifully-made film adaptation of Suite Française last night - with Kristin Scott Thomas as the mother-in-law from hell. In fact, since I couldn't remember a thing about the book - I know I read it, I know I enjoyed it, but it seems to have homogenised with a lot of other wartime novels in my befuddled, middle-aged brain into a kind of WW2 vichyssoise ... well, it was all as good as new to me, and if there were any deviations from the book, they went over my head. 

What struck me most - given the very tragic end that was so soon to befall novelist Irène Némirovsky - was her generosity of spirit in portraying the decent German officer who is billeted on two Frenchwomen. 

Coincidentally, over the weekend, I read this very slim novella about a brief, intense friendship at school between a middle-class Jewish boy and a young German aristocrat in 1932, during the rise of Nazism, after coming across EmilyBooks' intriguing review here. It is infinitely more moving and convincing than the clumsy emotional manipulation of Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - which I loathed. If you read it, don't - whatever you do - peep at the ending because the very last sentence is a punch in the guts that I didn't see coming.