Review: Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky

Today, in January Magazine’s fiction section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky. Says Leach:

Returning, momentarily to transplanting oneself -- as Joyce did for Dublin, Hemingway for Michigan, and later, Paris. Némirovsky did not -- could not transplant herself. The author was Jewish, and instead, with merciless acuity, documented the shrinking world around her. With Hitler’s troops drawing near Paris, Némirovsky and her family fled to Issey-l’Evêque, where she wrote the stunning Suite Française and possibly reworked drafts of Fire in the Blood. In 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. She was 39 years old. Her husband Michel was also killed. Their daughters, Denise and Elisabeth, were passed hand to hand, hiding until the war’s end. For their entire lives -- Denise is now elderly, Elisabeth deceased -- Némirovsky’s daughters carried their mother’s unopened suitcase, assuming it contained diaries. Finally the women decided to donate their mother’s papers. Denise began typing the handwritten papers therein, finding the handwritten Suite Française and bits of Fire in the Blood. Suite Française was published to deserved acclaim in 2006. After some searching, Fire in the Blood, which Némirovsky had distributed in bits to various friends for safekeeping, was pieced together and now appears in English, beautifully translated by Sandra Smith.

The full review is here.