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Available
Description
"After four years of bloody warfare Bernard Jacquelain returns from the trenches a changed man. No more the naive hopes and dreams of the teenager who went to war. Attracted by the lure of money and success, Bernard embarks on a life of luxuriant delinquency supported by suspect financial dealings and easy virtue."
User reviews
LibraryThing member Jaylia3
If you enjoyed Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Française, her novel of life in France during the German occupation of WWII, I think you will be just as enthusiastic about The Fires of Autumn. It has the same kind of sweeping but intimate storyline, and the same gorgeous prose style. Written in 1940,
The Fires of Autumn follows a diverse but connected set of Parisian families from the days of optimistic confidence before WWI, and carries them through the despair and disillusionment of the war itself, the intoxicating moral and monetary temptations of the 1920’s, and the financial and cultural adjustments of the 1930’s. Fortunes are made and lost, affairs are begun and abandoned, and children grow up and have children of their own. The book concludes during the chaotic early years of WWII.
Though many characters are involved, much of the story revolves around the sometimes tender but often fraught relationship between Thérèse Brun, who wants to live a simple, loving, traditional life, and Bernard Jacquelain, who is cynical after his harrowing experiences of trench warfare in WWI and bent on grasping all the pleasure he can through fast living, luxury surroundings, and assignations with willing women, not caring--at least at first--about the cost.
So far I have loved everything I’ve read by Nemirovsky. She excels at painting a scene, so it’s easy to imagine the colors, ambiance, and smells of her settings. And she brings readers inside the hearts and minds of her characters in sometimes long internal monologues, but her writing is always sensually and emotionally rich, never dry. This is a compact book, only 240 pages long, but Nemirovsky makes every word and image count.
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after Nemirovsky fled Paris and two years before her death at Auschwitz, The Fires of Autumn is being marketed as a “spiritual prequel” to Suite Française because though it doesn’t have the same characters it takes takes place in France in the years before the events of the other book.The Fires of Autumn follows a diverse but connected set of Parisian families from the days of optimistic confidence before WWI, and carries them through the despair and disillusionment of the war itself, the intoxicating moral and monetary temptations of the 1920’s, and the financial and cultural adjustments of the 1930’s. Fortunes are made and lost, affairs are begun and abandoned, and children grow up and have children of their own. The book concludes during the chaotic early years of WWII.
Though many characters are involved, much of the story revolves around the sometimes tender but often fraught relationship between Thérèse Brun, who wants to live a simple, loving, traditional life, and Bernard Jacquelain, who is cynical after his harrowing experiences of trench warfare in WWI and bent on grasping all the pleasure he can through fast living, luxury surroundings, and assignations with willing women, not caring--at least at first--about the cost.
So far I have loved everything I’ve read by Nemirovsky. She excels at painting a scene, so it’s easy to imagine the colors, ambiance, and smells of her settings. And she brings readers inside the hearts and minds of her characters in sometimes long internal monologues, but her writing is always sensually and emotionally rich, never dry. This is a compact book, only 240 pages long, but Nemirovsky makes every word and image count.
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LibraryThing member Schatje
This novel explores the effects of war on humanity. Set in France, it focuses on a group of friends/neighbours from 1912 until the early years of World War II. Some characters die; some grieve the loss of loved ones. At the centre is Bernard Jacquelain whose life is used to most dramatically
Bernard eagerly volunteers to fight when World War I breaks out. He rejoices in living in “heroic times” believing that war will be a great adventure at the end of which he “will bring back Victory.” Almost immediately, war changes him: “So courteous, so shy in ordinary life, since he became a soldier, he gave way to bursts of rage.” His mother thinks of him as a stranger: “She didn’t know who he was anymore.” Bernard survives the entire war but emerges a broken man: “He had aged without having had the time to grow up.” Physically he has few scars; “Mentally, though, he had been wounded in a way that nothing in future could ever heal, a wound that would grow deeper every day of his life.” He becomes totally cynical: “He was nothing. He no longer believed in God, the immortal soul, the goodness of mankind. He needed to get as much pleasure as he could.” And “He had no respect for anything, not for women, not for love, not for the ideas for which they had fought.” Between the wars his sole concerns are the pursuit of pleasure and the accumulation of wealth. He becomes involved in “crooked deals” which “had to do with procuring what was superfluous rather than what was actually necessary, deals that fed on bluff, publicity and expenditure until they reached the point where they worked endlessly just to produce enough money to spend, and needed still more to make more.” Then World War II begins.
I really enjoyed Suite Française but I was disappointed with this book which the publisher calls its prequel. The dialogue is often clumsy. A wife tells her husband that she is pregnant; he responds with “’Oh, no! That’s all we need! What a disaster!’” while she protests, “’Aren’t you ashamed? What about me? I’m so happy . . . ‘” The tone is often didactic with awkward comparisons: “It was war. This scourge on the immense body of the world had unleashed great waves of blood. Now everyone could tell that such a wound would not heal easily, and the scar would be ugly to behold.” The ending is contrived; even with the reference to the “purifying pyres of autumn,” the change implied is not convincing, especially since it seems to contradict the theme.
I also disliked the female characters; they are either “sluts” or totally loyal, faithful and submissive. Thérèse, a major female character, is certainly the latter; even as she contemplates marrying a man, she admits, “He is a good man, intelligent, but I don’t respect him . . . He has no conscience.”
Suite Française is a masterpiece; this book is not. There is too much telling and not enough showing. In the end I felt I had read a sermon rather than a novel.
Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
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illustrate the theme. Bernard eagerly volunteers to fight when World War I breaks out. He rejoices in living in “heroic times” believing that war will be a great adventure at the end of which he “will bring back Victory.” Almost immediately, war changes him: “So courteous, so shy in ordinary life, since he became a soldier, he gave way to bursts of rage.” His mother thinks of him as a stranger: “She didn’t know who he was anymore.” Bernard survives the entire war but emerges a broken man: “He had aged without having had the time to grow up.” Physically he has few scars; “Mentally, though, he had been wounded in a way that nothing in future could ever heal, a wound that would grow deeper every day of his life.” He becomes totally cynical: “He was nothing. He no longer believed in God, the immortal soul, the goodness of mankind. He needed to get as much pleasure as he could.” And “He had no respect for anything, not for women, not for love, not for the ideas for which they had fought.” Between the wars his sole concerns are the pursuit of pleasure and the accumulation of wealth. He becomes involved in “crooked deals” which “had to do with procuring what was superfluous rather than what was actually necessary, deals that fed on bluff, publicity and expenditure until they reached the point where they worked endlessly just to produce enough money to spend, and needed still more to make more.” Then World War II begins.
I really enjoyed Suite Française but I was disappointed with this book which the publisher calls its prequel. The dialogue is often clumsy. A wife tells her husband that she is pregnant; he responds with “’Oh, no! That’s all we need! What a disaster!’” while she protests, “’Aren’t you ashamed? What about me? I’m so happy . . . ‘” The tone is often didactic with awkward comparisons: “It was war. This scourge on the immense body of the world had unleashed great waves of blood. Now everyone could tell that such a wound would not heal easily, and the scar would be ugly to behold.” The ending is contrived; even with the reference to the “purifying pyres of autumn,” the change implied is not convincing, especially since it seems to contradict the theme.
I also disliked the female characters; they are either “sluts” or totally loyal, faithful and submissive. Thérèse, a major female character, is certainly the latter; even as she contemplates marrying a man, she admits, “He is a good man, intelligent, but I don’t respect him . . . He has no conscience.”
Suite Française is a masterpiece; this book is not. There is too much telling and not enough showing. In the end I felt I had read a sermon rather than a novel.
Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
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