Another N
“Fire in the Blood”
by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith
Knopf, 138 pp., $22
“Suite Française,” Russian-Jewish émigré writer Irène Némirovsky’s long-lost novel about the Nazi invasion and occupation of France, was one of the surprise bestsellers of 2006. So it’s not unexpected that her publishers would follow it up with more titles by her.
What’s surprising is that the new book, like “Suite Française,” is another never-published book. Found among papers that Némirovsky left with her editor in early 1942 before she went on the run from the Nazis, “Fire in the Blood” first appeared in France earlier this year. Written sometime between 1938 and 1942 (Némirovsky died in Auschwitz in August 1942), it covers a smaller canvas than “Suite Française” but is, in its way, just as unsettling. Set deep in the French countryside, it might be described as a pastoral - except that it’s far more gritty than Arcadian in content.
Narrator Silvio is a “prodigal son” who fled his native village and sowed his wild oats in Africa, Canada and Tahiti, only to come home feeling he’s accomplished nothing. By going away, he has lost much of his local status (not to mention land and fortune). Now, in late middle age, he’s a cranky loner, regarded by his extended family with a certain fondness and, perhaps, a certain wariness.
They ought to be wary. Silvio, though he doesn’t tip his hand at first, has the goods on everyone in this tightly knit community. And the events he recounts in his deceptively casual notebook entries (the form the novel takes) are the stuff of high melodrama, muted by rural propriety and concern for family reputation.
As the book opens, his attention is focused on his cousin’s daughter Colette, soon to get married. Colette worships her parents and hopes to replicate their marital bliss. But Silvio, without really saying anything, holds back from endorsing Colette’s view of her elders. (Later, he’ll be more explicit with her: “No one deserves to be admired so passionately. Just as no one deserves to be despised with too much indignation … “)
Colette isn’t the only young woman under Silvio’s scrutiny. There’s also Brigitte Declos, married to a canny old farmer who bought much of Silvio’s land from him and is now in failing health. It’s obvious to Silvio that Brigitte is having an affair with a younger man. The surprise to him is that Colette may be involved with the same guy.
Silvio doesn’t judge the women or the “fire in the blood” that impels them toward infidelity. Indeed, he’s had his own share of fiery moments, moments that may be key to how the book’s plot will unfold.
With startling economy, Némirovsky telegraphs the prejudices, passions and taboos that govern life in this isolated community, where people keep an eye out for the main chance (land acquisition) but prefer not to go to the police with their complaints. As for how they amuse themselves, there’s drink, there’s sex and, for the women, the occasional “free show, the kind you get with a birth or sudden death.”
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 low-key, 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. Good news: Everyman Library will bring out still more of this fine author’s early work in January.