Jezebel by Iréne Némirovsky (1936, translated by Sandra Smith, 2010)

I offer my great thanks to Max for the gift card which allowed me to read this book.

My Posts on Iréne Némirovsky 

Many great writers have died under cruel barbaric circumstances. I am, for reasons not entirely clear to me, very impacted by the knowledge that Iréne Némirovsky died at age forty in Auschwitz.   

Like most of her readers, my literary love affair with Iréne Némirovsky (1902 to 1942) began when I read her acknowledged by all master work Suite Francaise.  I then read her most autobiographical novel, The Wine of Solitude.  Next I read her very interesting David Golder centering on a White Russian family living in Paris.  From there I moved on to a very fun and wickedly funny novella about a teenage girl's revenge on her mother (Iréne Némirovsky did have "mother issues"), The Ball.  I also read her The Courilof Affair and Snow in Autumn, both deal with White Russians living in Paris.

Jezebel is a work of great psychological penetration.  Jezebel is, of course, a biblical adulterous, branded by history as a whore, a stealer of husbands.  Gladys Eyesenach, the lead character in Jezebel, is first presented to us at age sixty, on trial for mudering her twenty year old lover in a fit of jealousy.  The opening chapters shows us the trial, the various witnesses for and against Gladys and most of all Gladys herself.  At sixty, still possessesing significant sexual appeal and a decadent kind of beauty.  She is very wealthy, from her late husband.  

I do not want to at all spoil this powerful book for other Némirovsky lovers who have not got to it yet, but it presents a brilliant picture of a woman you are sure to hate.  It shows us a corrupt society where women internalize the idea that they are of value only as long as they are attractive and young.  There is a terrible conlict between Gladys and her daughter climaxing in a scene painful to read.  Némirovsky can write very visually and this scene will leap out for your throat.  We follow Glady's liife as she ages and is taken over by a fear she will lose her power over men.  We meet lots of interesting characters. I think this must be one of the first works of fiction in which the procedures for an abortion are openly talked about.  

The biographers tell us that Némirovsky's mother was a cruel woman, a terrible mother.   

Jezebel is a very powerful work.  My advice is first read Suite Francaise then ponder a read through of Némirovsky's oeuvre.  

I have begun her novel The Fires of Autumn.

Mel u