It's pretty amazing. It's an unfinished work (two of a planned five books) by a Russian, Jewish woman living in occupied France in 1942, and it's about... occupied France in 1941/42. So it's a novel, but it's startlingly immediate and intense, especially because you know that Nemirovsky didn't finish the books because she died in Auschwitz in August 1942. The manuscript was kept by her eldest daughter (who was about 8 when her parents were deported and gassed) and not read by anyone, including the daughter, until a couple of years ago. The daughter thought it was a journal, but lo and behold it turned out to be a novel.

I'm also most of the way through Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickeled and Dimed. I read the Harper's article when it first was published a couple of years before the book, and I always felt like I got everything I needed from the article. I still kind of feel that way, although the book is entertaining. I would say skip this one and instead read The Working Poor by David Shipler.


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Breathe and know you're breathing