Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
76th out of 345 books
—
36 voters
Fire in the Blood
From the celebrated author of the international bestseller Suite Française, a newly discovered novel, a story of passion and long-kept secrets, set against the background of a rural French village in the years before World War II.Written in 1941, Fire in the Blood – only now assembled in its entirety – teems with the intertwined lives of an insular French village in the ye...more
Hardcover, 176 pages
Published
December 30th 2008
by Knopf
(first published January 1st 2007)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
"Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns out."
This extremely short novel is narrated by Silvio. He spent most of his life roaming the world and having exotic mistresses. Now he has come home to roost in a hovel near a small French village. Looking back on his life, he wonders why he ever felt the need to wander. All he wants now is to be left alone to drink his wine, write, and watch the seasons pass. He tells the stories of youth and passion and betrayal among some of the locals, both past and...more
This extremely short novel is narrated by Silvio. He spent most of his life roaming the world and having exotic mistresses. Now he has come home to roost in a hovel near a small French village. Looking back on his life, he wonders why he ever felt the need to wander. All he wants now is to be left alone to drink his wine, write, and watch the seasons pass. He tells the stories of youth and passion and betrayal among some of the locals, both past and...more
Feb 06, 2009
Susan
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2009,
international_fiction
Fire in the Blood is a short novel by the same woman who wrote Suite Francaise. The novel is set in the years just before WWII in the same area of France as the second part of Suite Francaise . Like the larger unfinished novel, this one captures French countryside life and the varied characters that populate the rural areas of mid 20th-Century France with grace and honesty. The novel itself centers around the question of what we really know about the people around us and what happens when famili...more
About ten years ago I took a course in French Women Writers (in translation). Irène Némirovsky wasn't included, but we read a lot of Colette, de Beauvoir, Duras, and Yourcenar.
There's a particular tone of writing they all have in common -- maybe it's a fundamental to the way women write in French, or maybe it's fundamental to the experience of being a French woman (although Yourcenar immigrated to eastern Canada). I don't know. But this fit in beautifully with what I read and loved before.
I'm sp...more
There's a particular tone of writing they all have in common -- maybe it's a fundamental to the way women write in French, or maybe it's fundamental to the experience of being a French woman (although Yourcenar immigrated to eastern Canada). I don't know. But this fit in beautifully with what I read and loved before.
I'm sp...more
Dans un village des années 1930, Silvio se souvient des amours passées de François et Hélène. Leur fille Colette épouse Jean Dorin, mais celui-ci se noie accidentellement en rentrant chez lui. Mais était-ce bien un accident? Ce roman qui commence comme un récit paysan assez traditionnel finit par soulever les secrets des divers protagonistes, ceux que l'on croyait bien enfouis, mais que Silvio connait sur le bout des doigts.
J'ai bien aimé ce roman qui monte en puissance petit à petit vers une fi...more
J'ai bien aimé ce roman qui monte en puissance petit à petit vers une fi...more
The setting is the French countryside in the 1930s, a bourgeois farming community. The lives and secrets of an extended family are observed by a peripheral figure, Silvestre. He'd been born in the area, but as a young man he'd chosen a life of restless wandering that lead nowhere, in contrast to his peers' steady movement toward cold, grasping prosperity. Now he has has returned and has settled back in as a single, middle aged man of modest means, living out a sedate, uneventful life. His detach...more
Nemirovsky's prose, translated from French into English, made me want to retake high school French all over again so I could read this beautiful novella in its original language. In Fire in the Blood, Nemirovsky explores the transition from the passion of youth to the wisdom of old age. The novella's narrator is an old french farmer who has lived out his adult life in the same rural french village. I found it interesting that Nemirovsky decided to tell the story from a male's perspective becaus...more
Irene Nemirovsky, author of Suite Francaise, wrote another winner in 1941 before her death at Auschwitz.The story takes place in an isolated French village before WW11. Silvio, a solitary person in his older years, is drawn into a scandal in this small village. "As his narration unvolds, 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." This 129 page novel left me no time t...more
This is a charming little novel set in France prior to World War 2. The story is of a man who has traveled and let an interesting life away from his home. He returns later in life and is quite content with the solitary life he is presently leading. But he is slowly drawn into the lives of his friends and neighbors, and quite a few secrets unfold. The author was born in Russia in 1903, and died in Auschwitz in 1942. The book was published for the first time in French in 2006, and translated into...more
Suite Francaise was one of my favorite books I read last year so I am giving this a whirl.
3/11/08: finished. The main character, Silvio, is an old man who has moved back to his small farming community after a life spent traveling the world. Silvio watches the romantic entanglements of the next generation and is reminded of his youth and the 'fire in his blood." It is a meditation on youth, love, lust, and old age. An interesting story with throught provoking ideas but like her other novel I wis...more
3/11/08: finished. The main character, Silvio, is an old man who has moved back to his small farming community after a life spent traveling the world. Silvio watches the romantic entanglements of the next generation and is reminded of his youth and the 'fire in his blood." It is a meditation on youth, love, lust, and old age. An interesting story with throught provoking ideas but like her other novel I wis...more
I enjoyed the book in that it gave me another glimpse into French life. Reading Nemirovsky has also brought surprising light onto why I am the way I am because of having grown up in France. I also had a really heavy wave of homesickness at one point in the story, I think when the author was describing the French countryside.
I didn't like it as much as Suite Francaise--The ending was a bit abrupt. Don't know whether I would have felt differently if I hadn't read the books so closely together. The...more
I didn't like it as much as Suite Francaise--The ending was a bit abrupt. Don't know whether I would have felt differently if I hadn't read the books so closely together. The...more
"And aren't the most beautiful follies the ones linked to love?" (43)
"When you're twenty love is like a fever, it makes you almost delirious. When it's over you can hardly remember how it happened...Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns itself out." (45)
"The flesh is easy to satisfy. It's the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love, to despair, to burn with any kind of fire...That was what we wanted. To burn, to be consumed, to devour our days just as fire devours the forest." (...more
"When you're twenty love is like a fever, it makes you almost delirious. When it's over you can hardly remember how it happened...Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns itself out." (45)
"The flesh is easy to satisfy. It's the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love, to despair, to burn with any kind of fire...That was what we wanted. To burn, to be consumed, to devour our days just as fire devours the forest." (...more
Wonderful!
The preface to the French edition is printed in the back, and it describes this book so well, I'll quote it here:
"Constructed around a gradually revealed secret, Fire in the Blood describes, as a naturalist might describe, a predatory community of extreme cunning. Behind the pretty rural scenery, beasts lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce, and as the reader's eye becomes accustomed to the dark, we can't miss them."
And later, "it was her love of its natural beauty that gives Fire in t...more
The preface to the French edition is printed in the back, and it describes this book so well, I'll quote it here:
"Constructed around a gradually revealed secret, Fire in the Blood describes, as a naturalist might describe, a predatory community of extreme cunning. Behind the pretty rural scenery, beasts lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce, and as the reader's eye becomes accustomed to the dark, we can't miss them."
And later, "it was her love of its natural beauty that gives Fire in t...more
You just can't go wrong with Irene Nemirovsky. Her books are so great to read. Like Suite Francaise, Fire in the Blood is a book about people and place. This book is similar to Dolce in Suite Francaise. She had such a talent for characterization and description of place. It's as if you are there with these people. And, like Nemirovsky's other stories, she throws in twists and turns that you never really saw coming. I love that. This is definitely a "Must Read" if you liked Suite Francaise.
Fire in the Blood's author, Irène Némirovsky, was killed by Nazis at age 39 in Auschwitz, and though she had left her book manuscripts behind with her family, her daughters didn't read them until years after her death, fearing that her writing would cause pain. This book, Fire in the Blood, was pieced together from half a manuscript in her husband's possession and half in her daughter's. It records the story of the hermit Silvio and his interactions with the families in his village in Burgundy....more
Oct 21, 2012
Orsodimondo
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
ucraino-russa-francese
OGGI PIÙ DI IERI E MOLTO MENO DI DOMANI
La grande narrativa europea, la grande letteratura francese.
Se non che, Irène Némirovsky francese non è, viene da uno dei paesi più martoriati della storia.
Io, comunque, ho percepito e annusato Proust, Flaubert, perfino Simenon...
Ho letto un grande libro, amore a prima vista, piacere intenso distillato nell’arco di 24 ore e un breve viaggio.
Dovrei anche dire, la grande provincia francese, che su di me sicuramente esercita una malia.
Il quieto stagno, che...more
La grande narrativa europea, la grande letteratura francese.
Se non che, Irène Némirovsky francese non è, viene da uno dei paesi più martoriati della storia.
Io, comunque, ho percepito e annusato Proust, Flaubert, perfino Simenon...
Ho letto un grande libro, amore a prima vista, piacere intenso distillato nell’arco di 24 ore e un breve viaggio.
Dovrei anche dire, la grande provincia francese, che su di me sicuramente esercita una malia.
Il quieto stagno, che...more
4 likes · like · see review
Chaleur du sang
Stanotte attraverseranno un gran numero di paesini tranquilli, di villaggi sonnolenti, e passeranno accanto alle grandi case silenziose e scure perdute nella campagna: non immagineranno nemmeno che ogni cosa ha una vita profonda e segreta, che loro sono destinati a non conoscere.
In un paesino della campagna francese, Issi-l'Eveque, un uomo ormai anziano, Silvio, vive isolato, come un fauno in ritiro, nella propria casa. I suoi parenti, invece, Hélène e Francois, hanno vissuto una...more
Stanotte attraverseranno un gran numero di paesini tranquilli, di villaggi sonnolenti, e passeranno accanto alle grandi case silenziose e scure perdute nella campagna: non immagineranno nemmeno che ogni cosa ha una vita profonda e segreta, che loro sono destinati a non conoscere.
In un paesino della campagna francese, Issi-l'Eveque, un uomo ormai anziano, Silvio, vive isolato, come un fauno in ritiro, nella propria casa. I suoi parenti, invece, Hélène e Francois, hanno vissuto una...more
Oct 02, 2011
Sasha Martinez
added it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
books-read-in-2010,
yay-reading
Oh, I very much enjoyed this. As slim as it is, hell, I figured that I’d read a few pages then set it aside. But I finished reading it in one sitting, and dammit, I loved it.
[And with much thanks to Sandra Smith, the translator -- the language was fluid, and had the grace that I so missed when I read Dimanche and Other Stories, which was translated by someone else.]
So. It’s a very insular tale — compact and organic, too, so finely crafted. It’s easy to assume that this is a lesser work of a cele...more
[And with much thanks to Sandra Smith, the translator -- the language was fluid, and had the grace that I so missed when I read Dimanche and Other Stories, which was translated by someone else.]
So. It’s a very insular tale — compact and organic, too, so finely crafted. It’s easy to assume that this is a lesser work of a cele...more
I snatched this book up in a fit of joy when I was recently at my favorite bookstore, Half Price Books. A book I’ve been dying to read, in hardback, for $4,98!!! Heaven!
If you have not been introduced to the thrills of Irene Nemirovsky, RUN and pick up Suite Francaise, the gorgeous, painful story of various families in France trying to outrun the Nazi invasion. There are lots of beautifully-interwoven characters drenched in flawless prose dropped against a dramatic historical landscape … a.k.a....more
If you have not been introduced to the thrills of Irene Nemirovsky, RUN and pick up Suite Francaise, the gorgeous, painful story of various families in France trying to outrun the Nazi invasion. There are lots of beautifully-interwoven characters drenched in flawless prose dropped against a dramatic historical landscape … a.k.a....more
Suite Francaise has been quite the hype lately so I headed to the library to pick it up. Disappointed in not finding it, I found this novel written by her instead and decided to take it home. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this novel has a very similar background to Suite Francaise (see summary above). And truth be told it is the author's background as much as the story (perhaps even more so) that make this novel fascinating.
By itself, this is an interesting story, one of love and betra...more
By itself, this is an interesting story, one of love and betra...more
A very fine piece of writing from the pen of the tragic Irene Nemirovsky,whose previous,post-humous novel,'Suite Francaise', garnered such rich praise. This short novel is intense & claustraphobic,detailing perfectly a small French town's secret,illicit passions,which rebound wildly every which way on the main characters' lives during the penumbral 1930s.It is full of typical Gallic perfidy,in a period when France was spiralling downwards towards the shame & humiliation of the capitulati...more
El germen que llevó a Irène Némirovsky a escribir esta magnífica novela corta o relato largo (ella misma dudaba) es lo que ella llama el "ardor de la sangre", esa "llamarada de sueños", ese "fuego sordo y oculto" que nos consume en la juventud.
Es meritoria la capacidad de Némirovsky a la hora de condensar en tan pocas páginas la historia de dos generaciones de una familia en un pueblo francés. El tema de la novela es la herencia de padres a hijos (en este caso, de madre a hija) de determinados c...more
Es meritoria la capacidad de Némirovsky a la hora de condensar en tan pocas páginas la historia de dos generaciones de una familia en un pueblo francés. El tema de la novela es la herencia de padres a hijos (en este caso, de madre a hija) de determinados c...more
Having been so deeply affected by Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, I was eager to read Fire in the Blood. Fire has the author's signature subtle wit and prodigious powers of observation. She presents early 1900s Burgundy peasant life and paints portraits of their most profound passions from the perspective of an older Cousin Silvio in 1938 reflecting on his youth and that of his family and neighbors.
From the first, we know Silvio has a secret. We identify with his weariness, but also with his youn...more
From the first, we know Silvio has a secret. We identify with his weariness, but also with his youn...more
La storia inizia in modo semplice e quasi insignificante, descrivendo un gruppo di persone che vive nella Francia rurale all'inizio del novecento. Poi ad un tratto le cose cambiano, i personaggi, inizialmente quasi insignificanti, cambiano prospettiva e si scoprono dettagli che ce li mostrano in un'altra luce, con tutte le loro debolezze ed il loro passato.
Un passato di relazioni illecite, di figli illegittimi, di ipocrisie, di passioni. É il calore del sangue, quella passione che in gioventù ci...more
This book was originally written in 1941 and it is believed that it was still being worked on right up to when she was sent to her death in 1942. It is only recently when writers were working on an autobiography of her that the entire novel was discovered and brought together for publication. The main character here is Silvio, an older man who spent his youth travelling the world having a variety of adventures. He has sold off most of his land to pay expenses and now lives alone in a very small...more
La tesi da cui prende spunto la Nemirovsky per imbastire la trama apparentemente semplice di questo breve romanzo è altrettanto semplice, in superficie: “il calore del sangue” è una febbre che infiamma e brucia l’anima, dura poco, come l’alta marea che arriva, distrugge i castelli e i giochi sulla sabbia e poi scompare all’improvviso come è arrivata. “A vent’anni qualcuno fa irruzione nelle nostre vite. Sì, uno sconosciuto, esuberante e alato, radioso, che ci accende il sangue, ci devasta la vit...more
So unerwartet hat mir noch selten ein Buch so gut gefallen. Ich wünschte, ich könnte es im Original auf Französisch lesen, doch sind meine diesbezüglichen Sprachfähigkeiten leider zu begrenzt. Warum ich mir das bei der Lektüre sehr gewünscht habe, liegt daran, dass ich das Gefühl hatte, die Sprach sei außergewöhnlich - doch gleichzeitig war ich mir der Übersetzung gar zu bewusst.
Doch kommen wir zum Inhalt: Absolut faszinierend - eine Geschichte die auf einer Idee beruht, über die man noch lange...more
Doch kommen wir zum Inhalt: Absolut faszinierend - eine Geschichte die auf einer Idee beruht, über die man noch lange...more
Feb 05, 2009
Bookmarks Magazine
added it
Given the astounding success of Suite Fran
When I want a really well written novel with a great insight into history I'm really glad that Irene Nemirovsky's novels have been saved and translated. It was her personal history that drew me to her in the first place but now that I have read nearly all the novels and short stories that have been translated I find varied characters that I can relate to and believe.
This one captures French countryside life and the varied characters that populate the rural areas of mid 20th-Century France with...more
This one captures French countryside life and the varied characters that populate the rural areas of mid 20th-Century France with...more
I am adding my own half-star and giving this book 3.5 stars, a palpably sensual novel written by a woman in her mid thirties as she reflects upon her life, romances, and mistakes. Beautiful passages that describe the French countryside and both young and unrequited love. I would assume this very short book would have filled out more if Nemirovsky had not met her untimely death in Auschwitz in 1942 before turning 40.
Well, it couldn't compare with Suite Francaise, and I suppose that, despite myself, I was hoping for that. Having now read the background on the (amazing) discovery of this novel long after Nemirovsky's death, I tend to think that she couldn't have considered the book finished. The characters aren't yet dimensional. They're in development, placed into the action by the author-god but not yet fully animated. If she'd been granted more time rather than death in a Nazi death camp, Nemirovsky would...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Irène Némirovsky (born February 11, 1903, Kiev, died August 17, 1942, Auschwitz, Poland) was a Jewish novelist and biographer born in the Ukraine, who lived and worked in France.
More about Irène Némirovsky...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“After all, the three of us were young. It wasn’t just about the pleasure of the flesh. No, it wasn’t that simple. The flesh is easy to satisfy. It’s the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love, to despair, to burn with any kind of fire…That was what we wanted. To burn, to be consumed, to devour our days just as fire devours the forest.”
—
10 people liked it
“And aren't the most beautiful follies the ones linked to love?”
—
5 people liked it
More quotes…
Oct 21, 2012 08:31pm