Customer Reviews

Setting Fires: A Novel

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Kate Wenner has written a book with many layers. Family tragedies and travails intertwine with religion, ethics and morality, justice, perserverance, and relationships. The gripping story hooks you in while she loads you with her own family history, lessons learned in life, how to deal with tragedy. Her story is so very believable and so easy to identify with. It was a book I could not put down, each chapter coaxing me to the next. It is also a book that, like fine food or wine, one does not forget the taste of. It is memorable and inspiring.

This is a compelling book from the opening sentence: 'Two fires taught me lessons about my life, two fires separated by nearly six decades.' From beginning to end, the story of the Waldemas family sparks thought and inspires the imagination. Vivid characters-- Annie, her father Abe, her children and siblings-- people a narrative laced with ideas. This is a book about real, engaging people, to be sure, but it is also a meditation on family bonds and family secrets, the impact of anti-Semitism and the search for modern Jewish identity, not to mention reconciliation to the death of a loved parent. This is a novel worth reading. It provokes and it satisfies

Kate Wenner's "Setting Fires" is one of the best books I've read in years. Compulsively readable, it is also a deeply moving story of a relationship between a father and daughter (which encouraged me to reconnect with my own elderly father); between a husband and wife; between a mother and her children; between a sister and her siblings; and between a human being and her spirit. This is a story of real relationships; real pain; real depth--both spiritual and emotional; and even real suspense. A magnificent accomplishment.

This is a wonderful novel, made amazing by the fact that it is the author's first novel. That fact is hard to believe, as it is wirtten with the confidence and skill of a seasoned pro. What I especially love about this book is the combination of a great plot with a really uplifiting theme. You feel stronger and better as a human being after you finish this book than you did before you started it. I can't say that about many modern novels, but I can sure say it about this one. This would be a perfect book for book groups to pick up and use as one of their selections. I hope it will gather the wide, wide audience it deserves. Read this book. I promise you, you will be glad you did.

I read this book the way one eats an exquisite meal at a fine restaurant, in courses, sitting back in between each one to enjoy the fine delivery of information, the detail, pace and meaning. It is a great story.

Setting Fires is provocative of deep thought and discussion and would be a good candidate for book club pleasure and scrutiny.

Participating with one's parent in the chapters of dying is a near-to-hand prospect for our bulging generation. Wenner has provided us with a moving map of the territory.

I recommend this book highly: good writing, easy to get into, and fascinating.

Other books I have enjoyed are: Corelli's Mandolin, Cold Sassy Tree, Cold Mountain, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, and The Poisonwood Bible

There's a good, rich story here, but it doesn't make for the absorbing novel it should. Wenner, a fine journalist, hasn't quite made the leap to a successful fiction style. There's too much summary narration, and much too much explaining of themes, ideas, and characters' motivations; I wish she'd trusted the story itself to carry more of that weight. I feel sure it could.

Thankfully, the main story has enough life to keep bobbing to the surface and making waves. Hate and love, sin and redemption, after all, are eternal and powerful forces, and Wenner depicts their pull and push amid the mundanedetails of daily life. Waldmas investigates alleged anti-Semitism in the hills of New England, but first she has to find the baby-sitter. She and hubby want to collect on their fire insurance and rebuild their dream house, but first they have to carp at one another over the chores. - Beliefnet, Aug. 2000

As you all know from my recent post, Setting Fires by Kate Wenner, I started reading it a few days ago. The book was an easy read and hard to put down. From the first sentence of the chapter to the last page, it was a journey that somewhat similar to mine or so to speak.

The book is about the life of Annie Waldmas and how she coped with the death of her family, experiences an anti semitic, and the reconnection with broken family ties. The tale talks about live and the mistakes people made through it, the gain and lost of love, how a person sees life inspite of death and how one should move on inspite the loss.

It's basically a daughter-father story that touched me entirely. As some of you might now, I don't have a good relationship with my father and reading the novel made me think some things. Does the though of eath really change everything. When one person is faced with the reality ofpassin on to the next life, do you really see life differently?
Reading the book made me cry. I'm a cry baby but this is the first time I cried reading a book, a first I must say! I've read a lot of nice lines throughout the book and even highlighted them which is not my thing.


The book is totally worth it being it the first fiction novel or a seasoned journalist. Don't think twice especially if you like these types of book. I also recomend this book to people who are undergoing grief and don't know how to move on after alove one passed away, or for a person who is lost with their faith, and for a person who is experiencing family troubles. After reading it, I was envy of the families relationship with each other. I envy the love that surrounds them.

Annie Waldmas balances the needs of two children, a husband, a career and a dying father as she struggles with the shame of deception, a passion for the truth and the meaning of family. Setting Fires beautifully draws you into the life of a very real family, then sends you off on their journey like a thriller.

I am a freshman student at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul MN, and am actually shocked that I had to read this book in my freshman English course. My professors obviously wanted a light read to finish the year off, and this Oprah "book of the month" is just that: light. Everything in this book is on the surface, there are no insights that are left to the reader to discover and work out. I will agree that there is a good premise behind this story, but it never gets off its feet. I found myself laughing at the fake drama that Wenner creates throughout this novel. I found this novel highly unrealistic, not because of the story but because of its form. My worst critique deals with Annie. She is self-involved, obnoxious, inconsistent, and one of my least favorite literary characters...period.

Please save yourself the dread of this book, and pick up a Faulkner or Steinbeck instead.

Jeffrey