Not so Suite Francaise

I'm probably going to cause gasps of horror now but I've put Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky to one side after reading just the first story.I'm sure you will all say the second story is the better one now I've told you that.
Horror because it made the top reading lists of just about every pundit asked last year, rapturous eulogies everywhere.I think it was even crowned and installed on the Best Book Throne 2006 by quite a few literary supplements.
I've read it in dribs and drabs which can't have helped but in actual fact that's all I wanted to read it in, I couldn't sustain a long haul read for some reason and just kept putting it aside after 20 pages or so.It's been on the go since Christmas.
Yet if there was a subject that was "me" and most likely to appeal this is surely it?
I think beyond all else the cover has really really annoyed me and I've spent longer trying to figure it out than I have reading the book itself.
Now somewhere, in this last week, I've come across a blog comment about this which I identified with completely and I can't remember where. If it was you please declare and thank you because you triggered the thinking for me on this.
I'm looking at the posing couple and have decided that they are super-imposed onto the background of an old photograph as perhaps is the chap with his back to them, but what's driven me crazy is that BRAND NEW suitcase.
It looks all wrong.
A battered, well-worn beaten up old thing would have blended into the whole and I'd have been fine.
Then I started to think, well perhaps that was intentional and if so why?
The Germans are about to invade Paris so you've dashed off to Bon Marche and bought a new valise because you never expected this to happen?
To date I've wasted so much time thinking about the dratted suitcase when I could have been reading I think perhaps I should have bought the book in this edition instead.
More thoughts in a while.