Customer Reviews:
 Nemirovsky's first novel is brilliant debut August 19, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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 wealth, but who increasingly faces a brutal reversal of fortune. 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; to her defence, Nemirovsky wrote this before Hitler's rise to power, but in 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).
Fantastic - A modern classic April 12, 2008
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Right from the first page, when David Golder refuses to help his business partner out of financial difficulties, this is a page-turner. An old-school personal fable, a morality tale about the perils of personal fortune and narcissism, Nemirovsky's short work is reminiscent of Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy, yet it is a resolutely modern tale of cut-throat financial speculation. It should be compulsory reading for anyone seeking or more especially guarding a fortune!
David Golder and his family and associates are deeply unattractive people and there appears to be much anti-semitic stereotyping deployed here, although it is fair to say that Nemirovsky both knew this world from her upbringing and marriage and also wrote this before the Nazi rise to power in neighbouring Germany. That aside, this is a fantastic novel. David Golder is a thoroughly believable and believably flawed individual; for all his faults, I felt sorry for him and wanted to know how things would pan out. I had trouble putting this down, it's a real classic, in an old-school way, but a real gem to read.
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