BURN [Paperback]

Jennifer Natalya Fink (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2003

June 1, 1953. A mute, naked boy appears in the garden of Sylvia Edelman: messy housewife, reluctant communist, and expert tomato gardener. Only a dog tag dangling from his neck identifies him: Simon. Is he a government agent, a runaway teenager, or a robot planted to persecute Sylvia and her tomatoes? Set amidst the sexual and political repression of the 1950s, Burn tells the story of the flamboyant Sylvia Edelman, Simon, and Sylvan Lake, a socialist Jewish colony in northern Westchester. Burn revisits familiar narratives of McCarthyism, Jewish socialism, and pedophilia, but from the rarely heard perspective of a menopausal immigrant woman. A fable for the Bush/Rumsfeld era, a rewriting of the Adam and Eve myth, Burn will scorch the reader with its Faulkneresque tale of tomatoes, torture, and tangled love.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Burn is without a doubt the best first novel I have read in a long, long time. -- Rebecca Brown

"Fink's amazing writing suspends the reader in a seamless erotic tragedy...deserves to be recognized as a literary classic." -- Patrick Califia

"This is a haunting, timely, and beautifully unresolved novel." -- Matthew Stadler

Burn is without a doubt the best first novel I have read in a long, long time. --Rebecca Brown

Fink's amazing writing suspends the reader in a seamless erotic tragedy...deserves to be recognized as a literary classic. --Patrick Califia

This is a haunting, timely, and beautifully unresolved novel. --Matthew Stadler

Burn is without a doubt the best first novel I have read in a long, long time. --Rebecca Brown

Fink's amazing writing suspends the reader in a seamless erotic tragedy...deserves to be recognized as a literary classic. --Patrick Califia

About the Author

Jennifer Natalya Fink is a writer, children's bookmaker, teacher, hell-raiser, and Brooklynite. She has won a variety of awards for her fiction, including The Dana Award In The Novel, STORY Magazine's Short Fiction Award, The Georgetown Review's Fiction Award, and the Billy Heekin Foundation Award. She is the Founder and Gorilla-in-Chief of The Gorilla Press, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literacy through bookmaking.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Suspect Thoughts Press (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971084688
• ISBN-13: 978-0971084681
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 4.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,115,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I would give this 6 stars if I could!, August 25, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: BURN (Paperback)

This is easily the best work of literature I have read in years.

And Fink tells her "fable for the Bush/Rumsfeld era" through one of the most fascinatingly unreliable narrators I have ever encountered: Mrs. Sylvia Edelman.

Sylvie, despite or because of all the asides, is some storyteller. And she is going through menopause and late-night hot- and cold-flashes and possible hallucinations and bags of red licorice as she regales the reader, like a guest at her kitchen table, with the events of the final days of 1953 and of Sylvan Lake Colony, a socialist Jewish workers colony from the 1930s that the Feds are closing in on. Only a few of the founding members remain, including Sylvie, staying steadfast in the home she and her late husband Max built.

Out back of her house, it seems Sylvie has found a naked boy among the tomatoes in her garden. His only possessions are a satchel with a bandanna and set of dog-tags he wears around his neck with the name Simon. He vanishes and reappears for several days till Sylvie gets a hold of him.

Burn begins with this mystery and only gets more mysterious as Simon and Sylvie grow closer and the Feds, at the height of the Red Scare, close in. Old comrades disappear to Moscow or Jersey; Sylvie's sister Rose begs her to leave and get respectable; Simon cannot or will not talk and may or may not be a government spy.

To tell more of the story would ruin the beauty of this book. It is the uncertainty of events and Sylvie's grip on reality, coupled with Sylvie's deceptively simple but lyrical language, that make Burn a true work of art that recalls the writing of Faulkner as easily as Bernard Malamud. And it burns with a beautiful eroticism that echoes the passion and poetry of the original Song of Solomon.

I cannot recommend this book enough--to everyone who is interested in reading a timely and beautifully told fable that is also an amazing work of literature. Fink is destined to be one of America's greatest authors.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ---, September 8, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: BURN (Paperback)

Fink creates a breathtakingly original, powerful, and believable universe. Burn is painful and oddly gentle and funny at the same time. It delineates marvelously fluid boundaries between dream and reality, justice and absurdity, inside and outside, terror and elation. Moving, eye-opening, and full of subtle layers that resonate long after you put it down, Burn is a true gift.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating!, August 31, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: BURN (Paperback)

A mysterious story that kept me engrossed - from the affair between her protagonist and the mysterious blond boy, to the gathering storm of threatening government surveillance, BURN was suspenseful and thought provoking. An apt tale for our times.