NovelWorld

This little mini-masterpiece would be cause for rejoicing even if Suite Francaise had never been found. Far from being one of those second-rate “lost” manuscripts exploited after an author’s death, Fire in the Blood is a lean, mean little wonder, a treasure just recently pieced together, possibly the last manuscript Nevirovsky was working on in 1942 when she was arrested, imprisoned, and killed at Auschwitz.

Suite Francaise, with its historical setting and grand wartime scope, is Nemirovsky in a Tolstoy-like mood, documenting her time. Fire in the Blood couldn’t be more different. Without a hint of wartime horrors, it’s her timeless Chekhov piece, a tight little drama of country landowners and unfaithful wives in which some humdinger surprises go off like blazing pistols in the second half.

Old Sylvestre, nicknamed Silvio, impoverished uncle, down-on-his-luck failure in life, has decided to lay bare his soul and the souls of quite a few members of the wealthy farming community of a little village in Burgundy. He’s particularly interested in three fascinating women: his lovely, happily-married cousin Helene, her daughter Colette who is about to be married, and Brigitte Declos, a young woman married to a wealthy old skinflint.

Colette introduces her fiancé to her family. She announces that she hopes for a marriage as stable and enduring as her parents’. That’s how it begins. But no one knows the whole story in this swift little whiplash of a literary experience, as two beautiful young women with “fire in the blood” reach out for the man they love, unleashing the secrets and lies of everyone around them.

Gasping at the audacity of the last sentence, overwhelmed by a new understanding of the plot in retrospect, this reader went right back to the beginning of this cunning little puzzle of deceptions to read it again. Every word counts, every sentence is immaculate, every twist of the storyline is a delightful pleasure, in this wise, ironic look at passionate love and the collateral damage of “fire in the blood.”

As Sylvestre says, “The flesh is easy to satisfy. It’s the heart that is insatiable…”

(originally posted on Shelf-Awareness.com)