Categories: books
Date: 04 April 2009 14:57:46
I meant to blog about this first novel some time ago - and in a way it is fortuitous that I forgot as I have now read a second novel which fits snugly with the theme - so you get two for the price of one.
The first is François Mauriac's Le Nœud de Vipères. I first read this in French when I was 17 in preparation for my French A level. When I chanced across the English translation in a charity shop I pounced on it thinking that it would be good to reacquainant myself with an old friend. The Knot of Vipers translated by Gerard Hopkins tells the story of an old man writing a curse on his wife, children and grandchildren who plot and play in the house and garden around him. He plans to disinherit his obsequious and grasping family but as he gathers in the bitter harvest of his hatred the plan becomes a confession, a cry from the depths for an absolution in which he does not believe.
I have to make a confession myself for I have plagiarised most of the above from the jacket blurb. When I was 17 I remember really enjoying this book, discussing it in class, writing essays and so on. I could barely remember the names of the characters all these years later and had also forgotten a couple of key twists in the plot. Nor did I think it was that fabulous anymore - although this can possibly be attributed to the cynicism of old age.
I wonder if, in a couple of decades, I will re-read Irène Némirovsky's Fire in the Blood and find I have undergone a similar transformation? Chaleur du Sang - translated by Sandra Smith - is this month's bookclub book. Set in a village in Burgundy between the World Wars, it depicts with deft and concise strokes the story of a French family in which the daughter is striving to emulate the happiness of her parents' marriage. As in Le Nœud de Vipères there is love and deception, betrayal and loyalty and an even more tangled web of relationships over a couple of generations. Just when you think the knots have been untangled there are a couple more which unravel. I really enjoyed the delicious tantalising tension which built up in the final couple of chapters. Fab.
I'm considering ordering a copy in French as it looks as if it might be relatively straightforward to follow for a bear with a rusty French brain. (Plot not too tortuous, manageable number of characters, vocabulary relatively straightforward..that kind of thing..)