Fire in the Blood

by Irene Nemirovsky Narrated by Mark Bramhall

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Irène Némirovsky (1903-42) penned a novel that is perhaps the first literary work written about World War II, but it remained unpublished for more than 60 years. When her unfinished Suite Française was finally released, it became an international bestseller. Another novel, this one complete, has now surfaced. Fire in the Blood is set in a small village, based on Issy l'Evèque, where Suite Française was written. With a deft hand, Némirovsky renders personal conflicts and hidden motives in this rural peasant community, some of which prefigure those of Suite Française. A significant work by a Jewish writer who died of typhus at Auschwitz.

Christopher Benfey

If I had read Fire in the Blood knowing nothing of its author or the circumstances of its composition, I would have guessed it was by some elegist of the French countryside like Jean Giono. Knowing that Nemirovsky completed this book about the timeless fire of love at the very moment an all-too-historical fire of hatred was snaking through France adds a painful poignancy to the reading experience. One can't help wondering whether the deeply held secrets at the heart of the plot had anything to do with Nemirovsky's own double life as she tried desperately to blend into an ordinary village in extraordinary times. With the return to print of four of Nemirovsky's earlier novels (including David Golder) planned for the coming months, we will soon be in a better position to judge precisely where this modest melodrama belongs in the larger achievement of a complex and remarkable writer.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Silvio, the narrator of Némirovsky's brief, posthumously published novel, lives alone on his small farm in pre-WWII rural France, committed to his permanent bachelorhood. But as he watches the affairs of young people around him, he recalls his early love life and the dying embers in his spirit start to glow again. Bramhall reflects this well in his deep, harsh voice by building up from Silvio's tone of quiet disdain and aloofness into one of possessive fervor. The French-accented English he uses for all conversation helps listeners place the story on a cognitive map. His voice lulls listeners past noticing the novel's unfinished state. The dropped strands of the plot, the chapters consisting of just a few paragraphs and the scenes with rougher edges all fade thanks to his low but intense growl. Fans of Némirovsky's more polished Suite Françaiseand romantics with a taste for passionately spoken French, will be swept up by this entrancing and evocative tale. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 3). (Oct.)

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Library Journal

If you loved the author's Suite Française-and how could you not?-you'll likewise take to this recently discovered treasure by Némirovsky, who perished in Auschwitz. "Fire in the blood" is the passion that propels all kinds of human triumphs and follies in the lives of otherwise undistinguished French paysans, citizens of the countryside in the early part of the last century, "a region that has something restrained yet savage about it, something affluent and yet distrustful that is reminiscent of another time, long past." Love, intrigue, mystery, death, and murder all figure in this exquisitely wrought tale, as related by the reclusive Silvio, who reconstructs an ultimately shocking family history that links the generations in unexpected ways. 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. If anyone has taken an accurate reading of the pulse of the French, it is surely Némirovsky. Beautifully translated, this work is enthusiastically recommended for all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/07.]
—Edward Cone

Kirkus Reviews

Following the discovery and publication of the French novelist's Suite Francaise (2006), here's another lost work: a short elegiac novel about the brief yet passionate loves and infidelities of youth. The best guess is that Nemirovsky (1903-1942) worked on this novel between 1938 and 1942, when she was deported to Auschwitz. The first-person narrator is Silvio, a middle-aged man living in Burgundy, an agriculturally rich region whose small landowners and farmers are suspicious and dour. As a young man, Silvio left this stifling community to sow his wild oats and work his way around the world, "propelled forward by the fire in my young blood"-echoes of Joseph Conrad's Youth. Now, all passion spent, his inheritance squandered and his lands sold, he lives alone with only his dog for company. Nearby live his cousin Helene and her husband Francois, a devoted couple, the picture of domestic tranquility. The marriage of their daughter Colette to Jean, a gentle young miller, sets the plot in motion. Early in their marriage, Colette takes a lover, experiencing like Silvio that "fire in the blood." There is, however, a complication. The lover, Marc, already has a liaison with another woman, the unhappily married ward of Helene's half-sister. One night there is an "accident"; Jean is found dead in the river. It emerges that Jean had lost a struggle with another man; Francois, never dreaming his daughter had a lover, wants to involve the police. Eventually Colette's parents learn the truth, which in turn forces Helene to make a stunning confession of her own about her young, passionate self, and induces in Silvio the great mournful cry, "I want my youth back." There is one puzzling omission at theend which suggests Nemirovsky, a careful plotter, had loose ends to tie up. Neither a masterpiece nor a curiosity but an elegant expression of universal longings rooted in a specific milieu, provincial France, that's observed with a caustic brilliance. First printing of 75,000

From the Publisher

Beautiful. . . . An enjoyable . . . portrait of manners from the first half of the last century.”
—The Washington Post Book World

"Courageous, uncompromising. . . . An entire world, vividly rendered, emerges from [these] pages.”
—Newsday

“An almost perfect miniature, a tale of divided loves and loyalties set in an insular rural French village.”
—O, Oprah Magazine

“[Némirovsky] coolly explores the heat of passions old and new. . . leav[ing] readers profoundly satisfied with this portrait of la vieille France…so manifestly dear to her.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

FEB/MAR 08 - AudioFile

Irene Némirovsky died at Auschwitz in 1942, before her fortieth birthday. Her posthumously published SUITE FRANCAISE became an immediate bestseller, and this novella, set in the prewar days of rural France, is a fitting addition to her legacy. Mark Bramhall tells of Silvio, who left his village a lifetime ago, seeking travel and adventure. With his inheritance spent, the middle-aged adventurer returns home to a farmer's hovel, enjoying his solitude while reflecting on his youth and missed love. With an easy-on-the-ears French accent, Bramhall’s voice holds the passion of youth, the regret of middle age, and the bitter wisdom of experience. He takes Némirovsky's elegant, spare tale and breathes life into it. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169411409
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/25/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter OneWe 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. They blew in from everywhere with the sharp, rich tang of autumn. My cousin Hélène and her daughter, Colette, were shivering beneath the shawls I’d lent them, cashmere shawls that had belonged to my mother. They asked how I could live in such a rat hole, just as they did every time they came to see me, and Colette, who is shortly to be married, spoke proudly of the charms of the Moulin-Neuf where she would soon be living, and “where I hope to see you often, Cousin Silvio,” she said. She looked at me with pity. I am old, poor and unmarried, holed up in a farmer’s hovel in the middle of the woods. Everyone knows I’ve travelled, that I’ve worked my way through my inheritance. A prodigal son. By the time I got back to the place where I was born, even the fatted calf had waited for me for so long it had died of old age. Comparing their lot with mine, the Erards no doubt forgave me for borrowing money I had never returned and repeated, after their daughter, “You live like an animal here, you poor dear. You should go and spend the summer with Colette once she’s settled in.”I still have happy moments, though they don’t realise it. Today, I’m alone; the first snow has fallen. This region, in the middle of France, is both wild and rich. Everyone lives in his own house, on his own land, distrusts his neighbours, harvests his wheat, counts his money and doesn’t give a thought to the rest of the world. No châteaux, no visitors. A bourgeoisie reigns here that has only recently emerged from the working classes and is still very close to them, part of a rich bloodline that loves everything that has its roots in the land. My family is spread over the entire province—an extensive network of Erards, Chapelains, Benoîts, Montrifauts; they are important farmers, lawyers, government officials, landowners. Their houses are imposing and isolated, built far from the villages and protected by great forbidding doors with triple locks, like the doors you find in prisons. Their flat gardens contain almost no flowers, nothing but vegetables and fruit trees trained to produce the best yield. Their sitting rooms are stuffed full of furniture and always shut up; they live in the kitchen to save money on firewood. I’m not talking about François and Hélène Erard, of course; I have never been in a home more pleasant, welcoming, intimate, warm and happy than theirs. But, in spite of everything, my idea of the perfect evening is this: I am completely alone; my housekeeper has just put the hens in their coop and gone home, and I am left with my pipe, my dog nestled between my legs, the sound of the mice in the attic, a crackling fire, no newspapers, no books, a bottle of red wine warming slowly on the hearth.“Why do people call you Silvio?” asked Colette.“A beautiful woman who was once in love with me thought I looked like a gondolier,” I replied. “That was over twenty years ago and, at the time, I had black hair and a handlebar moustache. She changed my name from Sylvestre to Silvio.”“But you look like a faun,” said Colette, “with your wide forehead, turned-up nose, pointed ears and laughing eyes. Sylvestre, creature of the woods. That suits you very well.”Of all of Hélène’s children, Colette is my favourite. She isn’t beautiful, but she has the quality that, when I was young, I used to value most in women: she has fire. Her eyes laugh like mine and her large mouth too; her hair is black and fine, peeping out in delicate curls from behind the shawl, which she has pulled over her head to keep the draught from her neck. People say she looks like the young Hélène. But I can’t remember. Since the birth of a third son, little Loulou, who’s nine years old now, Hélène has put on weight and the woman of forty-eight, whose soft skin has lost its bloom, obscures my memory of the Hélène I knew when she was twenty. She looks calm and happy now.This gathering at my house was arranged to introduce Colette’s fiancé to me. His name is Jean Dorin, one of the Dorins from the Moulin-Neuf, who’ve been millers for generations. A beautiful river, frothy and green, runs past their mill. I used to go trout fishing there when Dorin’s father was still alive.“You’ll make us some good fish dishes, Colette,” I said.François refused a glass of punch: he drinks only water. He has a pointy little grey beard that he slowly strokes.“You won’t miss the pleasures of this world when you’ve left it,” I remarked to him, “or rather once it has left you, as it has me . . .”For I sometimes feel I’ve been rejected by life, as if washed ashore by the tide. I’ve ended up on a lonely beach, an old boat, still solid and seaworthy, but whose paint has faded in the water, eaten away by salt.“No, since you don’t like wine, hunting or women, you’ll have nothing to miss.”“I’d miss my wife,” he replied, smiling.That was when Colette went and sat next to her mother.“Mama, tell me the story of how you got engaged to Papa,” she said. “You’ve never said anything about it. Why’s that? I know it’s a very romantic story, that you loved each other for a long time . . . Why haven’t you ever told me about it?”“You’ve never asked.”“Well, I’m asking now.”Hélène laughed. “It’s none of your business,” she protested.“You don’t want to say because you’re embarrassed. But it can’t be because of Uncle Silvio: he must know all about it. Is it because of Jean? But he’ll soon be your son, Mama, and he should know you as well as I do. I so want Jean and me to live together the way you live with Papa. I’m positive you’ve never had a fight.”“It’s not Jean I’m embarrassed about, but these great oafs,” said Hélène, nodding towards her sons with a smile. They were sitting on the floor, throwing pine cones into the fire; they had pockets full of them; the cones burst open in the flames with a loud, crackling sound.Georges was fifteen and Henri thirteen. “If it’s because of us,” they replied, “go ahead, don’t be embarrassed.”“We’re not interested in your love stories,” Georges said scornfully. He was at that age when a boy’s voice starts to change.As for little Loulou, he’d fallen asleep.But Hélène shook her head and was reluctant to speak.“You have the perfect marriage,” Colette’s fiancé said shyly. “I hope that we too . . . one day . . .”He was mumbling. He seemed a good lad, his face thin and soft, with the beautiful anxious eyes of a hare. Strange that Hélène and Colette, mother and daughter, should have sought out the same type of man to marry. Someone sensitive, considerate, easily dominated; almost feminine, but at the same time guarded and shy, with a kind of fierce modesty. Good Lord, I was nothing like that! Standing slightly apart, I looked at the seven of them. We’d eaten in the sitting room, which is the only habitable room in the house, except for the kitchen; I sleep in a kind of attic room under the eaves. The sitting room is always rather gloomy and, on this November evening, was so dark that when the fire was low, all you could see were the large cauldrons and antique warming pans hanging from the walls, whose copper bottoms reflected even the dimmest light. When the flames rose again, the fire lit up their calm faces, their kind smiles, Hélène’s hand with its gold wedding band stroking little Loulou’s curls. Hélène was wearing a blue silk dress with white polka dots. My mother’s shawl, embroidered with leaves, covered her shoulders. François sat next to her; both of them looked at the children sitting at their feet. I picked up a flaming twig from the fire to relight my pipe and it illuminated my face. It seems I wasn’t the only one observing what was happening around me for Colette, who doesn’t miss a thing either, suddenly exclaimed, “Why, Cousin Silvio, you have such a mocking look sometimes. I’ve often noticed it.”Then she turned to her father. “I’m still waiting to hear all about how you fell in love, Papa.”Translated from the French by Sandra Smith

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