Irene Nemirovsky was a prophet. In 1936 she published Jezebal, a novel about a woman on trial for the murder of her young lover. Neither the trial nor even the crime are the real subjects of this novel; they are, rather, the outward signs of a life’s obsession, the inevitable results of an unrestrained need….

Irene Nemirovsky is not someone whose works I see being reviewed much in the blogosphere–at least not in the very small corner of it that I inhabit–and I can’t understand why. For a perfect combination of stylistic elegance and psychological acuity distilled down to their essences (no door-stoppers here) I can’t think of her equal….