Fire in the Blood (2001)

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 was born in the area, but as a young man he'd chosen a life of restless wandering that ad lead nowhere. Meanwhile his peers had moved steadily toward cold, grasping prosperity. Now he has has returned and has settled back in as a single, middle aged man of modest means. He is living out a sedate, uneventful life. His detachment doesn't last, however as the passions and dramas of young couples around him stir up the longings of his own youth, when he was known as Silvio.

The transition from young to old is the main theme I took from the book. There are so many ways to look at this trajectory – naive to sophisticated, self-centred to empathic, impulsive/impatient to patient/cautious, hopeful to resigned, energetic to tired, and - swallowing them all in importance these days – pretty to ugly. This author’s take is the movement from generous-spirited and hopeful to pinched, diminished, dulled: the older person is someone who time has shallowed and shrunk. Finding the forgotten young person inside you is your best hope of revitalisation. "I want to bring that stranger to life" Silvestre declares. The author, in her late thirties, does so on his behalf, by recapturing his youth in writing.

The novel has the feel of a nineteenth or early twentieth century play - and apparently the author initially considered writing it in that format (Intro, p. xi). ( )

What a heartbreaker! And what's she doing with the structure? Note to self: map this book out. Seriously, this is one of the best novels I've read in YEARS. Thanks, Franny! ( )

This is a story told by Silvio an aging (60s) Frenchmen who is currently living in his small hometown after having spent the better part of his youth in world travels. It is a tale of relationships both romantic and family and the effects romantic love can have on a person, a family, a town.

Slow and not particularly noteworthy for me. ( )

I really loved this little book that explores how love changes from youth to maturity. Who doesn't remember that "fire in the blood" that infects you when you have your first love affair? If you're very lucky perhaps you go on to have a permanent relationship with that first love but, more often, it fizzles out. Even if you have a lasting relationship the quality of the love changes. Nemirovsky obviously knows a thing or two about love and, without having to go into graphic details, she captures the fever pitch of emotions. She also captures the minute details about life in the French countryside: the seasons, the crops, the food, the clothing, the furniture, the quality of the light. It drew me from cold, snowy Manitoba to France in the years between the wars. I wanted to linger but the book was short and soon it was done. ( )

http://thenovelworld.com/2011/07/11/fire-in-blood-irene-nemirovsky-review/ ( )