A Slow Fire Burning

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She recalls one critic saying of the book, “she should have just written The Girl on the Train 2, no one would’ve judged her for doing that.” She bursts out laughing. “And I was thinking ‘Yes they bloody would’ve done!’ And I didn’t want to anyway; I wasn’t interested in writing the same book again. I thought what I was doing was quite ambitious.” Into the Water is told from the perspective of 11 characters, “and OK, some people felt it didn’t work. But I’d rather be ambitious and fail than just do the same thing over and over. And how do you even do that? What are you going to do – is Rachel going to go into solving crimes? Develop a detective agency? It makes no sense to me.” The characters in this novel are realistically portrayed and the reader is able to form an emotional connection to them. I thought the title was very apropo because of the slow burn of anger, hatred, jealousy and deceit brewing within these characters. The plot is tightly structured yet full of surprises, keeping the reader engaged until the very end. I was expecting a big surprise, a major twist and I suppose it is here. But the reason I frame it in this way is that it came and went before I’d realised that that's what it was. I can’t say it was an explosive moment for me and that’s perhaps because there are many minor twists here and this one sort of melded in with the crowd. In retrospect it did explained things, it was the moment all should have become clear in my mind (as I’m sure it will in the minds of more switched-on readers).

Like the three parts of a braid, the stories of the three women in A Slow Fire Burning come together and are interwoven into one. Inside Laura's head, Deidre spoke. The trouble with you, Laura, she said, is that you make bad choices. Angela is Carla’s sister, living a lonely and unhappy life. She lived with her son Daniel until recent years when Daniel went to live on his own. They had a caustic, unhealthy relationship.

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An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.

Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. A Slow Fire Burning twists and turns like a great thriller should, but it's also deep, intelligent and intensely human.” – Lee Child The atmosphere is dark, the small group of characters unlikable, harboring secrets and truths. The young woman Laura, a tragic past, I felt sorry for and Irene a older woman, with a big heart, the only character I actually liked. There are many misdirections which change the story in small and big ways. A book within a book which also serves to confuse. The pacing is slow, but there are constant revelations and the truths are slowly revealed. She noted this at the time. Not that she was about to tell the detective that. When I first saw him, I got this strange feeling. . . . He'd think she was a nutcase. In any event, she realized now what it was, what she'd felt. It wasn't premonition or anything ridiculous like that, it was recognition.

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And her brand new work “A slow fire burning” has exactly the same problems! The author decided to create a slow burn mystery which could be helpful to build high tension and increase the expectations of the readers as the pace gets faster at the second half. But unfortunately this book couldn’t be defined as a mystery. It looks like a contemporary fiction about crowded and very unlikable characters’ connections with each other! Do you . . . do you get to know your . . . neighbors? Are they neighbors? Don't suppose they really can be if they're only here for a couple of weeks?" The novel is narrated by an omniscient narrator in the third-person past. The narrator spends each chapter in a different character’s perspective. The chapters alternate between Irene, Laura, Carla, Theo, and Miriam. Many chapters end with short excerpts from Theo’s fictional crime novel, The One Who Got Away, whose concept was stolen from Miriam’s memoir about her abduction as a teenager. Seriously, could you take me off speaker? I don't want to hear her voice; it makes me want to set fire to things." Theo Myerson and his wife Carla, who had the start of an incredible marriage, until their young son Ben died accidentally at only 3 years of age. They are both hiding enough secrets to bury any average human being. You may think you know their secrets, BUT JUST WAIT UNTIL THE ENDING!!!!!!!!!!