A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:

Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:


support the site


buy us books !
Amazon wishlist

the complete review - fiction

Fire in the Blood

by
Irène Némirovsky

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

B : decent picture of French country-life, if a bit melodramatic

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Review Consensus:

  Generally quite impressed, though many not exactly bowled over by the story.

  From the Reviews:

• "The plot of Fire in the Blood isn't in itself remarkable. The novella's strength comes from its identity as a newly published novel by Irène Némirovsky (...) Nor is it fair to judge the story by usual critical standards, since it's hard to tell just how complete a work it is. Parts of the novella feel unfinished -- some chapters are literally one paragraph long, and there's a plot thread left dangling. (...) And there's enough of Némirovsky's intelligence and caustic powers of observation to make Fire in the Blood more than a mere curiosity." - Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor
  
  
• "(C)ette histoire racontée par le vieux Silvio, patriarche d'une famille dans une campagne où l'ennui le dispute à la mesquinerie, où les mariages sont arrangés et les passions tenues au secret, possède tout le charme d'un roman de Mauriac. L'atmosphére, presque poisseuse, est rendue avec une formidable minutie. On retrouve dans ce rècit bref et intimiste les èclats du style Nèmirovsky." - Delphine Peras, L'Express
  
  
• "Nemirovsky’s delineation of the life of the French peasant is more than a little stereotypical. But, as is always the case with her work, she is so clever, quick and observant that every character in the story bounds into life and cliches are forgotten in the sheer longing to turn every page, to unravel the secrets Silvio reveals." - Carmen Callil, Financial Times
  
  
• "A subtle interplay of social status, private morality and emotional brittleness gives a Chekhovian feel to this taut tale of domestic intrigue, with glances to Proust in its fascination with the "foreign language" of youthful passion." - James Urquhart, Financial Times
  
  
• "Némirovsky's vivid descriptions of landscape, her mastery of the layers and textures of social relations, and her creation of a marvellously complex thematic form make of a slender, even clichéd story a compelling tour de force." - Janice Kulyk Keefer, The Globe & Mail
  
  
• "It is a claustrophobic vignette. (...) In order to bring this out, the novel has recourse to a number of violent twists and as a result feels somehow willed. The template of truth-telling has been so hammered into the characters that they are in danger of being thinned out, forced into the required shapes. As the story distances itself in the mind -- and it is a very readable page turner -- the twists begin to seem almost comical, like a cross between French farce and Royston Vasey. It is all sinister and inescapable." - George Szirtes, The Guardian
  
  
• "The novella is a model of storytelling, with each surprise appointed its appropriate place. One guilty façade after another is stripped away, but the ending has to be ambiguous. These wretched men and women will go on hoarding their money, and distrusting their neighbours as much as they distrust themselves. What a hellish Arcadia Némirovsky conjures up, and with what refinement and subtlety, even as the fire in the blood ignites and destroys." - Paul Bailey, The Independent
  
  
• "Fire in the Blood is a miniature masterpiece. (...) Shadowed by the certainties of ageing and decay, it is darkly elegiac. (...) The beauty of the prose and the dark fatalistic reflections of her ingenious story make this a sad, compelling read. Sandra Smith's imaginative and lucid translation brilliantly complements Némirovsky's ironic story: never too faithful to be tedious, nor too adventurous to be untrue to her author." - Anne Garvey, Independent on Sunday
  
  
• "Némirovsky hits the themes of youth versus age hard. (...) Although it is hard to match the power of Suite Française, Fire in the Blood is strangely engaging despite its overheated prose. Némirovsky again excavates the hypocrisy and self-serving impulses embedded in French culture -- and, perhaps, all human nature. Maybe that is the secret of her allure: By letting no one off the hook, she hooks us all." - Heller McAlpin, The Los Angeles Times
  
  
• "The book is laced with reflections on aging, identity and the effort to justify our endings by forgetting those possibilities that would have altered them. Némirovsky’s restraint counters the occasional melodrama, but her emotional intelligence performs the greatest redemption: surpassing her flaws with a grave awareness of love’s vagaries." - Joanna Fiduccia, New Statesman
  
  
• "Némirovsky, who wrote a life of Chekhov and considered casting Fire in the Blood as a play, seems to have aimed for the kind of wrenching revelations we associate with Ibsen. She also seems to have wrestled, not always successfully, with some of the challenges of writing a convincing thriller. (...) 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." - Christopher Benfey, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "From the beginning, this is a joy as Nemirovsky perfectly evokes the richness of the countryside (.....) But, like Nemirovsky, we can never get too cosy in an alarming world where evils lurk beneath the sleepy surface." - Katie Toms, The Observer
  
  
• "The novella (it's about 120 pages of text) is haunting and enigmatic, the age-old relationships among the villagers summed up in deft brushstrokes (.....) Unfortunately, what Fire in The Blood brings to our appreciation of Némirovsky as a literary artist is eroded by the four short novels newly published by Everyman's Library. (...) Fire in The Blood is superb; it is also short and atypical of much of her work." - Allen Barra, Salon
  
  
• "Here she skilfully presents a scene rich with love and betrayal, memory and (dis)illusion. (...) 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
  
  
• "From this simple opening Némirovsky weaves a plot so complex that the short book demands an immediate second reading to pick up all the clues that one has inevitably missed. Her technique of gradually stripping layers of deception away from her characters to show us more and more about their real behaviour, gives the story its excitement and pace." - Patrick Marnham, The Spectator
  
  
• "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
  
  
• "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
  
  
• "As the narrative gathers pace, unearthing one buried secret after another, like a disgruntled child kicking through fallen leaves, Issy-l’Evêque comes clearly into view. The café, the mill, the bridge, the river: a beautiful place darkened by human purposes. (...) Her own reflection on the journey from youth to old age maps the birth and death of impetuous passion to the absence of fire in the blood. In the end, there is bitterness, but also calm." - Ruth Scurr, The Times
  
  
• "The story of Fire n the Blood is unremarkable, and, although Némirovsky keeps her characters quite intriguing to the end, her treatment of the idea of youth is disappointing" - Emilie Bickerton, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -

The complete review's Review:

       Fire in the Blood is an odd little novella. Némirovsky writes here about French paysan-life, 'paysan' a term translator Smith makes a point of explicating in a Translator's Note, since it doesn't translate readily into English. Némirovsky certainly was not of this specifically French "rural social class", and the portrait she offers feels like an outsider's: even where she gets the general atmosphere and characterisation right there seems to be something missing.
       The story is narrated by Sylvestre, known as Silvio ("A beautiful woman who was once in love with me thought I looked like a gondolier" and changed it, he explains). He lives alone and seems to have few ambitions left in life, puttering along. But he's hardly alone in this attitude -- the paysans don't seem to like to make things easy and comfortable:

     It's true: 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.

     "These people are unbelievable," François whispered to me. "They can watch a man being murdered before their very eyes and still not say a word 'to avoid getting involved.'

To me ... well, I've seen so many die. He was a poor, jealous, clumsy lad who's better off where he is. You blame yourself for his death ? The way I see it, the only things to blame are chance and destiny. Your affair with Marc ? Well, you got some pleasure from it. What else do you want ?

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

• Alfred A. Knopf publicity page
• Vintage publicity page

• Boston Globe
• California Literary Review
• Christian Science Monitor
• L'Express (French)
• Forward
• The Guardian
• The Independent
• Independent on Sunday
• January Magazine
• The Los Angeles Times
• The New Republic
• New Statesman
• The Observer
• Open Letters
• San Francisco Bay Guardian
• The Spectator

• Irène Némirovsky at Jewish Women's Archive
• Profile at The Brooklyn Rail

• All Our Worldly Goods
• The Ball (Le Bal)
• The Courilof Affair
• David Golder
• David Golder - The Ball - Snow in Autumn - The Courilof Affair
• Dimanche
• Jezebel
• Snow in Autumn
• Suite française

• [Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt's The Life of Irène Némirovsky]
• Jonathan Weiss' Irène Némirovsky: Her Life and Works

• See Index of French literature
• See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

       Irène Némirovsky was born in Russia in 1903. Her family moved to France, where she became a successful and popular author in the 1930s. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.

- Return to top of the page -

© 2007-2021 the complete review

Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links