She loved studying and books, the way other people love wine for its power to make you forget. What else did she have? She lived in a deserted, silent house. The sound of her own footsteps in the empty rooms, the silence of the cold streets beyond the closed windows, the rain and the snow, the early darkness, the green lamp beside her that burned throughout the long evenings and which she watched for hours on end until its light began to waver before her weary eyes: this was the setting for her life.Learning that The Wine of Solitude – a story of a lonely and loveless childhood – is considered the most autobiographical of Irène Némirovsky's novels makes me want to quote Tolstoy's truism that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, and that feels appropriate beyond the obvious: in its tone and subject matter, this book feels like a feminine counterpoint – a yin to Anna Karenina's yang – that rounds out Tolstoy's masculine history and politics with a more female emotional perspective. This feels like a classic Russian novel, but in addition to the balls and sleigh rides and the boom of distant cannons, there is also a little girl determined to harden her heart against those who would try to break it. I loved the whole thing. Spoilers ahead.
The Wine of Solitude begins in the lead-up to WWI with eight-year-old Hélène Karol living in a shabby chic Kiev apartment with her beautiful and distant mother, her hardworking father (the “little Jew” who is expected to improve the extended family's fortunes), Hélène's dependent maternal grandparents, and her beloved governess, the only one who can reliably show affection to the little girl, Mademoiselle Rose. With parents who fight constantly, Hélène's life becomes both more quiet and more lonely when her father leaves Kiev for two years to build his promised fortune; two years in which Mrs Karol joins the ranks of other upper-class Russian women who spend their evenings on the arms of dashing young soldiers; two years in which Hélène's distaste for her mother grows into hatred and dreams of revenge.
She nurtured in her heart a strange hatred of her that seemed to increase as she grew older; like love, there were a thousand reasons for it and none; and like love, there was the simple excuse: 'It is because of who she is, and who I am.'The family is transplanted first to St. Petersburg (where Hélène's father becomes more emotionally distant and her mother is more brazen about her newest young lover), and then to Finland to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. When their village is found to be on the wrong side during the local civil war, Hélène's family finally moves to Paris; the city that Hélène's family has often visited throughout the years and which Hélène herself has been taught to love through her French governess. Having grown from girl to young woman during these years, and having experienced a sexual awakening, Hélène plots to use her newfound powers to take her ultimate revenge against the mother who had always put herself (and her lovers) above the emotional needs of her only child. In the end, however, Hélène resists the urge to destroy her mother for fear of becoming her. When her father dies just as the worldwide stock markets are collapsing, Hélène makes her own bid for freedom.
I'm not afraid of life. The past has given me my first experiences of the world. They have been exceptionally difficult, but they have forged my courage and my pride. And that immutable treasure is mine, belongs to me. I may be alone, but my solitude is powerful and intoxicating.There are so many lovely little truthful emotional moments in The Wine of Solitude, and simply delightful evocations of time and place. Having read this after Suite Française (and learning at that time that Némirovsky was eventually rounded up from France during WWII and killed at Auschwitz), there's a horrible irony to watching Hélène arrive in Paris and believe herself to be safe and free at last. I shudder to wonder at just how true to life this sad childhood might have been and marvel at Némirovsky's ability to turn pain into art.
