Fire Down Below [Paperback]

William Golding (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1999

An old ship rolls and pitches towards her destination. She still contains - precariously at times - her cosmos of human beings. There are panics, crises, agonizing decisions. There is a marriage at sea. This book completes a trilogy with "Rites of Passage" (Booker Prize) and "Close Quarters".

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The conclusion of the trilogy he began with the Booker Prize-winning Rites of Passage (1980) and followed with Close Quarters (1987), Nobel Laureate Golding's densely complex, subtle and exacting latest novel tussles intriguingly with thematic and formal problems that have occupied the author in his previous works. The present trilogy enriches itself by self-consciously playing off its fictional precursors in a number of dimensions, including, most obviously, that of the voyage of self-discovery. In relating an almost year-long voyage (in the Napoleonic era) from England to the Antipodes of a motley band of passengers and the crew of a decrepit former man-o'-war as they experience many of life's dramas, the trilogy evokes tales by Melville, Voltaire and Homer among others. And the novels may be further interpreted not only as the Bildungsroman of aristocratic young narrator, Edmund FitzHenry Talbot, by means of myth's revelatory reversal that exposes the disjunction between appearances and reality, but also (given the autobiographical details) as a means to Golding's own ironic self-discovery. The narrative's beautiful, otherworldly descriptions of the sea and air, as the ship, twice damaged by errors of judgment on the part of its younger officer, flounders in terrifyingly heavy seas, evoke a metaphysical, mythic dimension. This rich and problematical text resists facile interpretation even as it delights through Golding's witty and poetic evocation of the language of the period.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This novel completes the Nobel laureate's trilogy about a voyage from England to Australia in the early 19th century. Neither Close Quarters ( LJ 4/15/87) nor this volume achieves the formal unity of Rites of Passage ( LJ 10/1/80), but the story Golding tells is engrossing and psychologically acute. Just as the beleaguered ship can serve as a microcosm of English society, so the voyage functions as an allegory of a more primal passage, as young Edmund Talbot progresses from "the objectivity of ignorance" to "the subjectivity of knowledge." Equally noteworthy is Golding's description of a horrifying storm off the Cape of Good Hope. These volumesthe best sea fiction we've had since Conradbelong in most fiction collections. Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 313 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374526389
• ISBN-13: 978-0374526382
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,876,156 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Cornwall, England, William Golding started writing at the age of seven. Though he studied natural sciences at Oxford to please his parents, he also studied English and published his first book, a collection of poems, before finishing college. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, participating in the Normandy invasion. Golding's other novels include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, The Free Fall, Pincher Martin, The Double Tongue, and Rites of Passage, which won the Booker Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 3rd part of trilogy and doesn't stand alone, November 17, 1999

By 

Andrew Forbes ([e-mail]) (London, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fire Down Below (Paperback)

Wonderful prose, beautifully observed character study, as WG slips into the skin of an extremely priggish and snobbish early twenties aristocrat as he comes of age and begins to understand a little more of the virtues of the ordinary people around him. Sea journeys of that era were long, tedious, largely uneventful and extremely uncomfortable. All 3 books in the trilogy carry this perfectly: the maritime atmosphere is conveyed as perfectly as the arrogant character of the narrator. However, the tedium of the journey also comes across in the virtually non-existent plot which makes the books drag on somewhat. It is probably, though, as brilliant description of the English class system at the start of the 19th century as you will read. I believe that the books in Trilogies should be able to stand alone, if they are to be sold separately, & on that basis, this trilogy definitely fails. I'm glad I read it as a single 750 page tome.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars duplicate, January 9, 2007

By 

Elisabeth B. Butler "bbutler" (San Clemente, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fire Down Below (Paperback)

I returned this book because it is included in "To the Ends of the Earth".