Best of 2005: Review Rewind

Burning For You

The Great Fire concerns Aldred Leith, 33, son of a novelist, WWII hero who traveled through China on a gig post war and is now in Hiroshima to record the effects of the Bomb. He boards up at the compound of the region's medical administrator who is an ego-mad prick with 2 kids he ignores. Helen Driscoll, his 17 year old daughter, and Ben, the son with a freak disease that is deforming and killing him. The bro and sis are inseparable, have spent their lives as a twosome, and spend their time reading the classics. Leith comes around and falls for the girl and their romance, in letters and meetings and departures and separations by thousands of miles, makes up the heart of The Great Fire.

The odd part of Hazzard's structure comes with her dealings of the characters that intersect these three mains. She rounds all encounters out; for example, just when Leith has returned from a dinner with a woman we are back with that woman and her thoughts on the meeting. This happens in almost every chapter. It's an odd narrative interjection, and I think it's what threw me the first time through the book. I wanted to not like the book because of this device, but now knowing the book better I can't believe she pulled it off, and how well and unobtrusive and important it finally is.

Hazzard's characters are alive and scared and reckless with emotions. It didn't hit me until after finishing the book that Leith knew more dead and dying people than living. In The Great Fire war is everywhere (after VJ Day the allies thought the US and USSR were going tussle), in the fear people have when departing or greeting one another, knowing they've done these things before and people have gone forever. The book is alas a romance, and since I don't think I've ever set out to read one it's the best I've read.