num_pages: 248
description: Introspective intense and poignant The Wine of Solitude is the most autobiographical of all Irne Nmirovsky's novels now available in English for the first time.Imbued with melancholy and regret it explores the troubled relationship between a young girl her distant self-absorbed mother and her mother's lover Max. We follow the family through the Great War and the Russian Revolution as the young Hlne grows from a dreamy unhappy child into an angry young woman.Through hot summers in a fictionalised Kiev (Nmirovsky's own birthplace) and the cruel winters of St Petersburg the would-be writer Hlne blossoms despite her mother's neglect into a clear-eyed observer of the life around her. The Wine of Solitude is a powerful tale telling less of the end of innocence than of disillusionment; the story of an upbringing that produces a young woman as hard as a diamond prepared to wreak a shattering revenge on her mother.
language: English
title: The Wine of Solitude
publisher: Chatto  Windus