Aa part of my Springcleaning Challenge last year I read Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (see here for my review) and I said at the time that I had ordered another book by the same author because I had so much enjoyed the first novel. Fire in The Blood is that second novel (translated from the French by Sandra Smith) which has been on my to-be-read piles for a whole year without me getting to it, which is why I have chosen it for this year’s challenge.
The story is set in the 1920s in rural France and the book was written over a period of time up to 1942 when the author was murdered. A full copy of the text was only discovered in the 1990s when it was first published. It’s only a short book and I was able to read it in a couple of hours.
The story is set among middle-class landowners and farmers in a town where few people move away and where everyone knows everyone else. The narrator is Sylvestre, an older man, who grew up in the area, moved abroad and then returned. He has little of his legacy of land left and feels that he has been out manoeuvred by other local people who have banded together to buy his property at low prices. He has had an eventful life and remembers his youth as a time when he had passion and cared deeply about things, but he now has a more relaxed view of what happens and cares less than he did.
Sylvestre talks about people he knows, their loves and passions, what they do when they have that fire in the blood that he remembers from his youth, and the secrets they keep. He talks about relationships between families, between generations and between lovers. He understands how the younger people feel and then reveals secrets from his own past. It’s a small, but intense story, which I found very moving.
This book is an absolute delight. It’s beautifully written/translated and the author is great at conveying character in a few pages. I thought this was a brilliant read and only wish I had read it earlier – I shall now, of course, have to find other books by this author but maybe I will read them sooner after purchase !! This book goes on my shelves to keep.
Anne Is Reading 