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adt's review
4.0
After reading "Suite Francaise" by the same author, I wasn't expecting something superior. The author seems to capture provincial France the best I can determine from living in the provincial areas for very short stints. Perhaps it wouldn't be so enjoyable without that context? The unraveling of "long-guarded secrets of the past" is well-done and keeps the readers' interest. Most interesting where the authors' insights on love, life and compromises. Her perspective is quite amazing as she only lived 39 years.
jeanetterenee's review
4.0
"Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns out."
This extremely short novel is narrated by Silvio. He spent most of his life roaming the world and having exotic mistresses. Now he has come home to roost in a hovel near a small French village. Looking back on his life, he wonders why he ever felt the need to wander. All he wants now is to be left alone to drink his wine, write, and watch the seasons pass. He tells the stories of youth and passion and betrayal among some of the locals, both past and present. The book ends rather abruptly, which was a bit of a bummer, but it's still worth reading.
The best thing about this book is not the stories, but the portrait of French country life in the time between world wars. Very gossipy, provincial people, determined to remain insular and even overlook crimes in order to keep the peace and prevent outside interference. I really got a sense of place and time and enjoyed her descriptions of simple things like the colors of the sky or walking through thick leaves in the fall.
This extremely short novel is narrated by Silvio. He spent most of his life roaming the world and having exotic mistresses. Now he has come home to roost in a hovel near a small French village. Looking back on his life, he wonders why he ever felt the need to wander. All he wants now is to be left alone to drink his wine, write, and watch the seasons pass. He tells the stories of youth and passion and betrayal among some of the locals, both past and present. The book ends rather abruptly, which was a bit of a bummer, but it's still worth reading.
The best thing about this book is not the stories, but the portrait of French country life in the time between world wars. Very gossipy, provincial people, determined to remain insular and even overlook crimes in order to keep the peace and prevent outside interference. I really got a sense of place and time and enjoyed her descriptions of simple things like the colors of the sky or walking through thick leaves in the fall.
djrmelvin's review
3.0
Another book discovered by the researchers working on the Nemirovsky biography, this is the story of a middle aged French man and the family and community that keep him from being a total hermit. I suspect that this was only the first draft of the book, and yet, it's still quite readable. Short and with more than a few places where a paragraph or two takes the place of what should have been a whole chapter, the sense of place and characters are what make this a very good book, even when the plot weakens.
innerweststreetlibrarian's review
4.0
I love Nemirovsky. This is short and sweet, and so well written as a result. I can almost smell the pie...
goldiebooks's review against another edition
4.0
“Who would bother sowing his fields, if he knew in advance what the harvest would bring?”
The harvest would bring horror for Némirovsky, which makes her fiery writing all the more poignant. This book was only (somewhat) recently published because Némirovsky was murdered in Auschwitz before she could complete it. Her writing is stylistically unique with ideas that transcend time and nationality. Her characters are human. Their conditions, mortal. A life stolen, a soul inimitable.
The harvest would bring horror for Némirovsky, which makes her fiery writing all the more poignant. This book was only (somewhat) recently published because Némirovsky was murdered in Auschwitz before she could complete it. Her writing is stylistically unique with ideas that transcend time and nationality. Her characters are human. Their conditions, mortal. A life stolen, a soul inimitable.
canadianbookworm's review against another edition
4.0
This book was originally written in 1941 and it is believed that it was still being worked on right up to when she was sent to her death in 1942. It is only recently when writers were working on an autobiography of her that the entire novel was discovered and brought together for publication. The main character here is Silvio, an older man who spent his youth travelling the world having a variety of adventures. He has sold off most of his land to pay expenses and now lives alone in a very small and badly kept house. When he attends the wedding of a young female cousin he is reminded of the fire in the blood that he had in his youth and that she has. He is an observer of the family and as he describes his young cousin and her parents and other local relations, we see other youthful loves and regrets of age, some of them long-guarded secrets. This is a short, but strong novel that shows Nemirovsky's awareness of the rural life and the social conventions of the time.
margo666's review against another edition
5.0
My first taste of the author. Beautifully written. Great twist in the tale. Can't wait to try more.
balancinghistorybooks's review against another edition
5.0
Fire in the Blood by the inimitable Irene Nemirovsky is my first reread of my Reading the World project. I adore what I have read of her work to date; it is both measured and incredibly beautiful. Translated by Sandra Smith, as much of her work seems to be, Fire in the Blood is set in a rural village in the historical region of Burgundy, France - also the setting of the work which she is best known for, Suite Francaise.
Published posthumously in France in 2007, and in Britain a year later, Fire in the Blood was the second Nemirovsky which I read, whilst fittingly on holiday in the Dordogne. The volume opens with a foreword by Olivier Philipponat and Patrick Lienhardt, who both wrote an insightful biography of the author, as well as discovering the full-length manuscript of Fire in the Blood amongst her effects.
The novella - for a novella it is, really, running to just 158 pages in the pictured edition - tells of Sylvestre, known throughout as Silvio, 'his cousin Helene, her second husband, Francoise [sic], and of the truths, deaths, marriages, children, houses and mills that bind them with love and hatred, deception and betrayal'. As far as themes go within literature, this certainly covers a lot of bases!
From the outset, everything within the novella is so well evoked. Nemirovsky opens up a vivid world gone by in the first few exquisitely measured sentences: 'We were drinking a light punch, the kind we had when I was young, and all sitting around the fire, my Erard cousins, their children and I. It was an autumn evening, the whole sky red above the sodden fields of turned earth. The fiery sunset promised a strong wind the next day; the crows were cawing. This large, icy house is full of draughts'. Silvio then gives us crumbs of detail about himself; on the first page, he writes: 'I am old, poor and unmarried, holed up in a farmer's hovel in the middle of the woods'.
Unsurprisingly to anyone at all familiar with Nemirovsky's work, the character descriptions within Fire in the Blood are excellently wrought. Colette tells her Uncle Silvio: 'But you look like a faun... with your wide forehead, turned-up nose, pointed ears and laughing eyes. Sylvestre, creature of the woods. That suits you very well...'. Silvio's further descriptions of his own person, too, are memorable and unflinchingly candid: 'For I sometimes feel I've been rejected by life, as if washed ashore by the tide. I've ended up on a lovely beach, an old boat, still solid and seaworthy, but whose paint has faded in the water, eaten away by salt'.
Nemirovsky's use of the male perspective is realistic, and often quite profound. Through Silvio, the reader is brought into the heart of a small and rural community as though a member him or herself: '... the people around here have a kind of genius for living in the most difficult way possible. No matter how rich they are, they refuse pleasure, even happiness, with implacable determination, wary perhaps of its deceptive promise'.
Smith's translation is faultless; there is a wonderful poetic fluidity to the piece from beginning to end. Fire in the Blood is an incredibly human work, which has been exquisitely written. Her descriptions are reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield's in their vivid snapshots of beauty and clarity. Like Mansfield's, her work is almost entirely sensually appealing. There is so much depth within this short, and perfectly crafted, novel. For those unfamiliar with Nemirovsky's work, Fire in the Blood is a great taster of her wonderful stylistic choices, and engrossing storylines.
Published posthumously in France in 2007, and in Britain a year later, Fire in the Blood was the second Nemirovsky which I read, whilst fittingly on holiday in the Dordogne. The volume opens with a foreword by Olivier Philipponat and Patrick Lienhardt, who both wrote an insightful biography of the author, as well as discovering the full-length manuscript of Fire in the Blood amongst her effects.
The novella - for a novella it is, really, running to just 158 pages in the pictured edition - tells of Sylvestre, known throughout as Silvio, 'his cousin Helene, her second husband, Francoise [sic], and of the truths, deaths, marriages, children, houses and mills that bind them with love and hatred, deception and betrayal'. As far as themes go within literature, this certainly covers a lot of bases!
From the outset, everything within the novella is so well evoked. Nemirovsky opens up a vivid world gone by in the first few exquisitely measured sentences: 'We were drinking a light punch, the kind we had when I was young, and all sitting around the fire, my Erard cousins, their children and I. It was an autumn evening, the whole sky red above the sodden fields of turned earth. The fiery sunset promised a strong wind the next day; the crows were cawing. This large, icy house is full of draughts'. Silvio then gives us crumbs of detail about himself; on the first page, he writes: 'I am old, poor and unmarried, holed up in a farmer's hovel in the middle of the woods'.
Unsurprisingly to anyone at all familiar with Nemirovsky's work, the character descriptions within Fire in the Blood are excellently wrought. Colette tells her Uncle Silvio: 'But you look like a faun... with your wide forehead, turned-up nose, pointed ears and laughing eyes. Sylvestre, creature of the woods. That suits you very well...'. Silvio's further descriptions of his own person, too, are memorable and unflinchingly candid: 'For I sometimes feel I've been rejected by life, as if washed ashore by the tide. I've ended up on a lovely beach, an old boat, still solid and seaworthy, but whose paint has faded in the water, eaten away by salt'.
Nemirovsky's use of the male perspective is realistic, and often quite profound. Through Silvio, the reader is brought into the heart of a small and rural community as though a member him or herself: '... the people around here have a kind of genius for living in the most difficult way possible. No matter how rich they are, they refuse pleasure, even happiness, with implacable determination, wary perhaps of its deceptive promise'.
Smith's translation is faultless; there is a wonderful poetic fluidity to the piece from beginning to end. Fire in the Blood is an incredibly human work, which has been exquisitely written. Her descriptions are reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield's in their vivid snapshots of beauty and clarity. Like Mansfield's, her work is almost entirely sensually appealing. There is so much depth within this short, and perfectly crafted, novel. For those unfamiliar with Nemirovsky's work, Fire in the Blood is a great taster of her wonderful stylistic choices, and engrossing storylines.
debnanceatreaderbuzz's review against another edition
5.0
Silvio has returned to his homeland after many years’ absence. He is generally a recluse, but he does spend time with a few friends and relatives from his past, including his cousin Helene and her daughter Colette and his neighbor Declos. Silvio is now an old man and he observes his younger friends with sharp eyes: Silvio sees how the young are driven by fire in the blood, an illness to which he deems himself to now be immune.
rbiddy's review against another edition
5.0
A very dreamy little bit that flew by. It reminds me of "The Origins of the World", another dreamy short French bit. I really liked the narrator and his somewhat short-tempered opinions of youth and other people's messes. The story itself is completely predictable, but the way it's told is lovely.
I gave this to Mary as a birthday gift, and she gave it back to me to read, which, although I don't know if it was premeditated, was perfect timing on her part.
I gave this to Mary as a birthday gift, and she gave it back to me to read, which, although I don't know if it was premeditated, was perfect timing on her part.