Tag Archives: Irene Nemirovsky

Recent Book Purchases

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Yet again, I had banned myself from the library to concentrate on my own books, but a visit to the adjoining museum shop to buy a card ended up with me sloping into the library and of course I was seduced by some new books, but it was the unplanned book buying which was quite spectacular. In January it seems that every time I went out of the house I came back with books which I wasn’t even looking for – honest!

A visit to an antiques centre ended up with me buying the lovely Folio editions of the Mapp and Lucia books by E.F. Benson. I have them all but just in paperback so I couldn’t resist these, especially as they were so incredibly cheap. I’m not going to tell you exactly how cheap, I don’t wish to cause pain!

A mooch around some Edinburgh charity shops ended up with me buying the Penguin crimes.
The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
The Mask of Glass by Holly Roth
Cork on the Water by McDonald Hastings

I also bought It Ends with Revelations by Dodie Smith. Has anyone read this one? I’ve only read I Capture the Castle, which I really enjoyed. Then when I saw a pristine hardback of All Our Worldly Goods by Irene Nemirovsky I had to buy that too.

In the Scottish bookshop in Dunfermline I couldn’t pass up on
Children of the Tempest by Neil Munro and
The Selected Travel Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson called Dreams of Elsewhere.

Taking my library books back I swore I wasn’t going to borrow any more books, well I stuck to that but I couldn’t help just glancing at the bookshelves which hold the books for sale, Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym jumped out at me – really it did!

A trip to St Andrews saw me bringing back:
The Angel in the Corner by Monica Dickens, I haven’t read anything by her for getting on for 40 years, hard to belive it but true.
I also bought The McFlannels See It Through which is the second book in a humorous Scottish wartime series, but I don’t have the first one yet.

A trip to Linlithgow saw me buying:
The Children of the New Forest by Captain Marryat. It’s a children’s classic which I’ve never got around to reading. Of course it’s set in the English Civil War, which historians now recognise involved the whole of Britain, some of them are now calling it the War of the Three Kingdoms.

Also Nan of Northcote by Doris A Pocock, which is set in a girls school and was published in 1929. It cost me all of £1 and it could be absolute garbage but I love the cover.

My favourite and most expensive purchase was:
Scottish Gardens by Sir Herbert Maxwell, published in 1908 and it has lovely illustrations of some gardens which I’ve visited. I’m sure some of them don’t exist any more but I’m going to track them down and visit the ones I can, to see how they have changed over the years. The book is a beauty and was still a bargain, it’s for sale on the internet for much more than I paid for it. I’ve also discovered that the author was Gavin Maxwell’s grandfather. When I was a teenager I loved his nature books which are set in Scotland.

As you can see, I’ve got to get on with my reading!

Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky

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This is one of the last books which I read in 2013, I’m still trying to catch up with my book reviews. I read it because Jack had read it and really loved it, in fact he said he thought it was brilliant! I think I’ll be all laid back and Glaswegian about it and say it was ‘not bad’ I would give it 4 stars on Goodreads, presumably he would give it 5, and I see that Margaret@BooksPlease gave it a 5 too.

This is the first book which I’ve read by Nemirovsky and really I should have read Suite Francaise first, and by the way, I’ve just read that that is being made into a film which will be released in the autumn.

Anyway, back to Fire in the Blood which is just 153 pages long and was actually written in 1941 but was only published in 2007. Sadly the author died in Auschwitz in 1942. It was thought that she hadn’t finished this novel before her death but the manuscript came to light fairly recently.

Set in the small French village of Issy-l’Eveque, the story is narrated by Silvio who has come home to the village after spending most of his life abroad. It’s the sort of place where parents decide that it is time their children got married and try to pair them off with ‘suitable’ people. Silvio obviously wasn’t keen to stick around and do what was expected of him.

It starts with a wedding, the bride is one of a large family and her parents are a devoted couple. She hopes that her marriage will be as happy, but life gets in the way in the shape of passion and deceit and nothing is as it seems.

Nemirovsky had her idea for the book when she visited the village in 1937/38. It was a rural heaven on the surface but the inhabitants were distrustful of their neighbours and money obsessed. It’s all very French and presumably some of the things which go on in the tale were observed by Nemirovsky.

If you want to see what Jack said about it you can read his review here.