Fire in the Blood, Irene Nemirovsky
Fire in the Blood, Irene Nemirovsky
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Fire in the Blood

Author: Irene Nemirovsky, Sandra Smith

Narrator: Mark Bramhall

Unabridged: 3 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/25/2007

Synopsis

Here is a missing piece of the remarkable posthumous legacy of Irène Némirovsky, author of the internationally acclaimed Suite Française.

The novel–only now assembled in its entirety–teems with the intertwined lives of an insular French village in the years before the war, when “peace” was less important as a political state than as a coveted personal condition: the untroubled pinnacle of happiness.

At the center of the tale is Silvio: in his younger years he fled the boredom of the village and made a life of travel and adventure. Now he’s returned, living in a farmer’s hovel in the middle of the woods, and, much to his family’s chagrin, perfectly content with his solitude.

As his narration unfolds, we are given an intimate picture of the loves and infidelities, the scandals, the youthful ardor and regrets of age that tie Silvio to the long-guarded secrets of the past.

About The Author

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and emigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne, she began to write and swiftly achieved success with an early novel, David Golder, which was followed by The Ball, Snow in Autumn, Dogs and Wolves, and The Courilof Affair, among others. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on March 03, 2017

Who knew that rural France around the time of WW II was such a hotbed of marital infidelity? (Pun intended.) Perhaps it’s due to so many families marrying off daughters to old farmers, old enough to be their fathers, who own land and therefore wealth. Yet one woman in the story who is unfaithful has......more

Goodreads review by Aprile on March 11, 2021

Lo sapevo, lo sapevo che nella Némirovsky c’era qualcosa di veramente valido, ne avevo avuto evidente indizio con "Il Malinteso", con "Il ballo", meno in "Due", ma ne "Il calore del sangue" trovo che abbia raggiunto un grande risultato. Mi ha ricordato "Le braci" di Márai, forse per quella bellissim......more

Goodreads review by Sage on February 05, 2008

About ten years ago I took a course in French Women Writers (in translation). Irène Némirovsky wasn't included, but we read a lot of Colette, de Beauvoir, Duras, and Yourcenar. There's a particular tone of writing they all have in common -- maybe it's a fundamental to the way women write in French, o......more

Quotes

“Courageous, uncompromising . . . An entire world, vividly rendered, emerges from [these] pages . . . Némirovsky sets the tragedies of the plot in motion so unobtrusively, yet so surely, that when they come together the book has the inevitability–and yet the shock–that characterizes the books that mark us . . . If Thomas Hardy were alive to read Fire in the Blood, I think he'd recognize Némirovsky as kin.”
–Charles Taylor, Newsday

“With startling economy, Némirovsky telegraphs the prejudices, passions and taboos that govern life in this isolated community . . . Subdued on its surface, but with a tamped-down sensuality that gives it a near-vicious narrative drive, the book has a powerful sting in its tail. Translator Sandra Smith deftly renders its noirish bite into English, giving us a taste of what Némirovsky the writer was like before history handed her the subject matter that killed her.”
–Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times

“Posthumous second acts are tough. But Fire in the Blood is an almost perfect miniature, a tale of divided loves and loyalties set in an insular rural French village.”
–O: Oprah Magazine

“Exquisitely wrought . . . If you loved the author’s Suite Française–and how could you not?–you’ll likewise take to this recently discovered treasure . . . So great is Némirovsky’s reading of the human heart that her tale has the power of myth. And so true does it ring to reality that one could call it not so much a love but a life story."
–Edward Cone, Library Journal (starred)

"Stripped of the backdrop of war, the natural surroundings of Fire In The Blood add a depth and resonance to each of the story's characters, whether young or old, male or female. Subtle in its intention, this novella takes humanity in all its guises and captures the deep-seated desire for belonging and understanding." - Anna Millar, Scotland on Sunday
"Fire in the Blood, on which it seems she was still working when she was taken away to her death, confirms Némirovsky's brilliance as a storyteller with a deep understanding of the hidden flaws and cruelties not just in French society but in the human heart." - Anne Chisholm, The Telegraph (UK)
"Passion and dispassion stare at each other with mutual lack of understanding. In a book fuelled with images of fire and embers, Némirovsky brilliantly depicts a closed-in, inward-looking community, then gives what happens in it universal resonance by exhibiting not only what people do to each other but what the passing of time does to us all." -Peter Kemp, Sunday Times (UK)
"Like the second half of Suite Française, Fire in the Blood is set in a small, isolated village in rural France and displays, once again, Némirovsky's unnerving ability to map out her characters' internal faults with a humanity reminiscent of Chekhov.... Némirovsky is superb at teasing out people's personal worlds, disillusionment, moral hypocrisy and the ways in which old age invariably shows happiness to be little more than a youthful dream." —Metro (UK)

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