Customer Reviews

Fires

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nick Antosca has created a compelling, oftentimes brilliant look at humanity--its suffering, its cruelty, its love, and its healing. The other reviews point out that this is a "good debut," but that's dismissive; it's just plain good, and sometimes frighteningly so. That this is a first novel just inspires awe at a new writer's prowess.

The novel is short, yes, but it lingers long after it's been read and set aside. That kabuki mask on the cover keeps staring at you, reminding you of where you've been and what it meant.

Structurally, Fires unfolds like a boxing match against a seasoned pro who initially toys with you, throwing light jabs here and there to tease and play, but who gradually starts battering the bones with increasingly brutal and merciless blows until he finally has you against the ropes, and you're just hoping that some shred of humanity remains behind those lead-smelted fists. The images, the metaphors, and all the elements of the novel's language become increasingly feverish and passionate towards the end, as if exacting some revenge you never expected or thought you warranted--not at all unlike what happens in the actual plot.

And the plot, you will see, contains a startling relevance to recent events in the news, as if the author possessed amazing prescience to unleash his work on the public at exactly the right time. Questions that this country has been puzzling over for weeks are addressed with cogency in Fires.

This is the first, I hope, of many novels by this exciting new author. I'm eagerly awaiting the rest.

Nick Antosca has a precociously forceful voice, a magnetic narrative sense, and a sharp eye for telling detail ("A little boy's cap lies flat in the sand, as if he's down there too"). This is a spark plug of a book; a thoroughly enjoyable novel from a talented young writer.

A plot so threadbare even the Salvation Army wouldn't take it. A master weaving of innuendo, depressing sex, and an emphysema patient's worth of cigarettes, the novel is more style than substance. But what style! Worth the very small amount of emotional and temporal investment required.

Fires is a good debut novel...there is a lot going on as the book jacket says, "Deer running through a ghost neighborhood, A boy trapped in a basement for 8 years, three young people locked in a violent sex triangle." But I also liked the writing in this book: "A lean, sinewy guy wearing a faded baseball cap. He reaches out to grab my arm, scaring up an unexpected gust of moths in my belly." Or this one: "I love you," I whispered so quietly that, to my relief, she didn't seem to hear and never took her eyes from the mesmerizing crimson water. I looked away savoring the blissful warmth in my chest that came from saying those words and also glad that she had not heard and therefore could not later use it against me." I found the book easy and quick to read; if you're a book lover this one will go quick and we can only hope that this new writer may have just started to scratch the surface.

I read Fires in one sitting, as I imagine most people do. Easily engrossing, and certainly fast-paced, Nick Antosca manages not only to tell a fascinating story, but to write an excellent novel as well. With prose above all vivid, nuanced characters and appropriate (if standard) episodic plotting, Fires is well-worth reading, and thinking about too. The first time through I was simply gorging myself on the story, yet rest assured - the prose is still savory the second time through, and there are little joys to discover ("Girls who play games should be shipped off to an island with a volcano."). Let no one accuse Antosca of inauthenticity: half the book takes place at Yale, from which Antosca graduated in '05; the other half in a Maryland suburb similar to where Antosca grew up. The novel just begins, the reader thrust into Yale senior John Danfield's world. Through Danfield's eyes we see both Yale and New Haven from the sideline of both. Danfield lingers on the fringes, barely a student in the literal sense. John meets Ruth, damaged goods with an edge, and the two begin a schizophrenic courtship, by turns tender and violent, sometimes both. In the darkness that envelops the rest of the novel, only the monstrous fire that threatens the Eastern seaboard casts any light, and its glow is ominous. John moves in its shadow. As to the question of whether he emerges into the light, that's up to you to find out (and then perhaps to decide). Whole-heartedly recommended to anyone who likes...reading.

Fires is barely longer than a novella, but it is a very hard novel to describe briefly. It's not quite 200 pages long, divided into two main acts, one set at Yale and the other in the main character's hometown as wildfires approach. The first half is a love story and the second half is apocalyptic. Two things unify the halves: the main character, Jon Danfield, who sees and narrates the entire story; and the feverish intensity with which the entire book is written. The pages literally fly. This is a book that leaves one's mouth dry.

FIRES is a novel by Nick Antosca about "three young people locked in a violent sex triangle..." well, sort of. It's also about "a boy trapped in a basement for eight years," but at the same time, it also has "deer running through a ghost neighborhood." Oh, and there are no quotation marks, for like, when the characters talk and stuff. But this isn't a problem. In as few words as possible, I can say that FIRES is actually a pretty difficult book to label and describe without revealing too much of the plot. I can also say that it is fairly easy to read because FIRES features some of the sharpest prose I have ever seen.

A brief summary of FIRES would sound horribly mundane and rather dull, especially when compared to, say, a thriller like CODEX or a Tom Clancy novel (yuck). Part of the charm lies in the fact that many people can/could probably relate to some of the events that take place in the book. It talks about: love, anger, sex, frustration, depression, violence, sickness, drinking/alcoholism and a few other things that make up significant portions of our everyday lives.

The author basically tells a story that sort of unravels in reverse, as the major characters are quickly revealed in just the first few pages. On page 2: "James Dearborn is someone I know from high school. And George Mursey is a big, affable guy from my home town, a neighbor from just across the street. A high school teacher, a football coach. Not a guy you'd expect to-- Wait. I don't want to think about it yet. I want to think about Ruth." And the next section of the book, of course, is titled "Ruth."

The book isn't just one long continuous account of Jon Danfield's life and it's not a stream-of-consciousness crap-fest either. FIRES is separated into several little sections that could best be described as moments. These moments never mark the beginning of a new page, but rather, highlight several moments of Danfield's life. These moments can begin anywhere on the page. And with section markers like "Girl's Bedroom" and "Being Sick" everything is pretty much revealed in the title, no fancy word-play here.

From the very beginning, Antosca forces us (the readers) to ask several questions about the text and its characters (which he eventually answers, thank God). Some reviewers have described FIRES as rather slow and occasionally boring and I'm going to be brutally honest here when I say that without a doubt, there are times when you will be thinking "why the hell is Antosca talking about this and what does it have to do with the story" but at the same time, it's the little unnecessary tidbits of information and seemingly mundane portions of the book that actually interested me the most. The stuff inside Danfield's head.

Things like the sometimes long bouts of introspection (and there are a lot) allowed me to truly discover the character of Danfield, as dialogue is not always representative of a character. FIRES certainly lacks the sort of expository fluff that plagues countless other novels and boasts a writing style that is analogous to several other contemporary minimalists but still manages to offer something new to the genre. Think: Blake Butler, Sam Pink, Tao Lin, Noah Cicero or even Brandon Scott Gorrell and you'll get an idea of the writing style. Repetitious lines like: "Little. A little" and "All right, okay," are just two examples of a cyclic writing-style that embraces the flaws and imperfections of everyday speech. In FIRES, the characters speak like real people, and I applaud Antosca for actually writing authentic/believable dialogue that actually sounds interesting because it is so uninteresting (really!). In FIRES, the characters often mishear things and a lot of the time, respond with one-word answers, like "'kay" or "cool."

Awesome.

Stay with FIRES until the very end if you want to solve the mystery of the book because there is a mystery, sort of... You may not fall in love with: Dan, his parents, Ruth, James, George, Jeffrey or even Zach but that's not the point. Each character is beautifully flawed and Antosca is a master when it comes to allegorical depiction and metaphorical representation. Pay close attention to the dialogue and imagery. Antosca's very good with his words and every word in this novel counts.

when i started reading this, i thought i was in bret easton ellis territory, which isn't ncessarily a bad thing. but "fires" builds and builds, and has hidden layers, and secrets not readily revealed. this is an intense, moving, gripping short novel. it leaves one with a lot to think about when one's done. a lot.

Reviewed by: Cicily Janus

Posted courtesy of the Outsider Writers Book Review

Raging fires across most of the east, terrifying circumstances which push the incidental humanness of nature to its proverbial edge of rationality. Hold on for this ride folks. Once you buckle your seat belt after the first words are read, you will not be able to withstand the sheer adrenaline rush that inexplicably grabs your imagination by the throat. That is, until you defy your desirous need for more by the end of this sexy, intelligent and unexpected thriller, relaying you into a new kind of fear.

Nick Antosca's tale of young, college love, fear of unknown past and horrid acts of Mother Nature and human nature take you into a world that one could only hope does not exist. Yet, we have all been there. At some point, some time and some place, we have all been here, in this book. Acting out the roles he so vividly portrays through his beautifully written prose.

The characters of this book draw you into their seemingly small, philosophical world of overly drunk, sexually charged and drug abused college lives. Jon, Ruth, James and a host of kids resemble everyone at the last party you went to in college. It is difficult to deny that you were there, a part of this world outside of your comfort zone. Yet in a way, the world Mr. Antosca has created for us is but candy to the mind.

Circulating like a brilliant arc, James, Jon and Ruth are bound to eachother, through bonds yet unknown to each of them. But by the end, their bonds are undeniable, insanely corrupt and threatening each of their lives. The man across the street, the one everyone knows who is not who he appears to be, the parents in utter denial, the children turned adult dealing with the pain and destruction in their lives, set into motion by a gale force wind of terror.

Mr. Antosca's prose is surprisingly fresh; a style like none I have ever read previous. Hypnotic at times, his words describe every little character, every movement of their lives giving way to a narrative energy rivaling that of a speeding bullet.

And the air is redolent with a kind of hazy, luminous misery as the sun crawls higher; and the warm, buttery sunlight grows diluted. Frail shadows return. And we linger in the shade of the color of white wine, and in her dark brown eyes there are still questions I don't want to face. And so I turn my head, slightly, and go somewhere else.

I am there. Wholly there with every word, a (please, excuse my cliché) fly on the wall of this world.

As a relatively new writer, I could only hope to be able to contain my reader in such prose. I myself was chained to the chair, handcuffed to the manuscript for every thought provoking phrase. Thank you Mr. Antosca for sharing your thrilling talents, as I now fear the night you have leant my imagination, the world you draw outside the picture window of my house and the characters to whom I hope never to meet, although I have the feeling I already know them too well...

I read Fires and it wasn't really what I expected. The reason being is that I went to the same high school as the author and his teacher would always talk about how he's so good that one day he'll be quite famous. So, when I got the book I expected I was going to read something on the same level as Les Miserables. I had my dictionary sitting next to me as I read through the first pages thinking I was going to need it.
It read like a book that was written by a college or a high school student quite frankly. The author made references in the book to masturbating. But then again in Les Miserables the author dedicated an entire chapter almost to talking about human waste and the sewer system of Paris. Why he did that I don't know, but he definitely did not talk about masturbating. Also, our home town was renamed Bonderant, as in a place home to hillbillies and drifters with no place or purpose. The drug use in it wasn't exactly hardcore drug-usage, but more less just college kids experimenting with drugs.
I really didn't understand the symbolism of fires engulfing Bonderant, that is if there was symbolism intended. Maybe this is just because the author is so much smarter than me that his symbolism is invisible to my vastly inferior intellect. This is probably the case as in high school his teacher would talk about how we can't understand his writing because it's so far ahead of us.
This guy also had a website I ran into when I did a search looking for the first book he had written. On the website he talks about books he reads and his opinions on political matters. Something I find interesting though is he also talks about how he buys used cars and how it surprises him when they break down--genius.