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Good Reading : December January 2008
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Fire in the Blood Irène Némirovsky What a little gem of a book this is, quite perfect in its portrayal of the bourgeoisie, the fields and woods of a village in Burgundy, France. So perfect, in fact, that readers will feel enormous anger at the 1942 death of its author in Auschwitz, her only crime being bor n a Jew. Némirovsky’s family fled the Russian Revolution in 1918 and she became a bestselling novelist in France, but after the Ger man Occupation of 1940 she could no longer have her works published. She and her husband and two daughters fled Paris for the village of Issy-l’Evêque, where she wrote Suite Française, two novellas depicting life in France at the time of the German invasion. It was in that village that she was ar rested and deported. Suite Française was only published in 2004, to huge acclaim, after its manuscript was discovered in a suitcase saved by her daughters when they fled the village. Two of the original handwritten pages of an earlier work, Fire in the Blood, were in that same suitcase and the author had sent the rest to a family friend and editor as the war closed in. It is a story of secrets held close among a French far ming community; of murder, mar riage and inheritance; and the memories of an old man whose blood once ran with fire. As a tale of regret, it highlights the scarifying sorrow the world must feel at the brutal shortening of this brilliant writer’s own life. ★★★★ Chatto & Windus $29.95 Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville Exit Ghost Philip Roth Roth proves that not only first-time novelists tend to write autobiographies: here he writes as an old man (he is 74, his protagonist is 71), as he did in Everyman (2006), on themes that have so often absorbed him personally. But he is an old man full of wry humour at the ageing predicament – even incontinence and impotence – and the sudden, inexplicable desire to love once more, to be virile. This is not a young person’s book and it’s not a casual ad, although Roth’s yle is, on the whole, eceptively easy. It’s a writer’s book for its tructure and introspec- ion – at least for most f its length, because it izzles out. It is a must for followers of Roth’s alter ego, Nathan Zucker man, through eight previous novels, particularly the first, The Ghost Writer. Zucker man exchanges his secluded house in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, for Billy’s and Jamie’s New York apartment. He falls hopelessly in love with Jamie. Meanwhile, the for mer mistress of his literary hero EI Lonoff, Amy Bellette, now disfugured by brain surgery, asks him to prevent an upstart biographer, Richard Kliman, from revealing (inventing?) Lonoff ’s ‘terrible secret’. Why should private lives be public property? This is a novel of adjustment, of political disillusionment, and of the power of literary writing to soothe and enhance, and also compensate for, reality. ★★★★ RG Jonathan Cape $49.95 Reviewed by Barbara Baker ���� ���� ����� ��� ���� ���� ���� ���������� ��������� ��� ����������� ���������� ��������� ��� ���������� ��� ��������� �� ��� ���� ����������� ��� ��� �������� ����� �� ������������������������ ����������� ���� ����� ���� ��� ����������� ������������� ��� ���� �� ���� ������ ���� ��� ����� ������ ���� ���� ��� �������� ���� ��� ������ �� ���� ���� ������ ��������� �� ��� ��� ���� �� ���� ��� ���� ����� ��� ���� ��� ��������� ��������� ���� �� ���� ������� ��������� ������� �������� �������� ������������� ������ ��� �������� general fiction word of mouth
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