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The Flame Alphabet (Vintage Contemporaries) Paperback – November 13, 2012

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Ben Marcus (Author)
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2.8 out of 5 stars 104 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Series: Vintage Contemporaries
  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (November 13, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 030773997X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0307739971
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (104 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #698,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 starsInsightful analogy or fever dream?
By K. Sullivan VINE VOICE on January 5, 2012
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
A devastating illness sweeps the land. Speech has become toxic. It seems to have started with Jews but it spreads to all others. Only children are immune. Words are a disease to the body, a pollutant to the environment - leaving behind an accumulating salty waste. As the toxin evolves, it's no longer limited to speech, but extends to writing and gestures as well. All forms of communication are noxious, lethal. Adults are wasting away. Without initially comprehending the consequences (only later is speech consciously used as a force of terror), children keep talking, their words physically debilitating adults even in the rare instances when their meaning is not acrimonious. Eventually, children are abandoned to makeshift quarantines - communities from which all adults have fled. The adults are whisked away to a research facility. There the survivors attempt to devise a new safe method of communication.

Samuel (Sam) is the reader's window into the experience. He's a middle-aged Jew, married to Claire. Together they have a fourteen-year-old daughter, Esther. Classifying Sam as a Jew shouldn't normally be necessary. Here, however, it's essential to the story. Sam's brand of Judaism is "reconstructionist" focusing on a "covert method of devotion" complete with very peculiar worship practices and tools. No effort is made to explain or rationalize this strange faith, but it's pivotal to the story. This in no small way contributes to the surreal unsettled nature of the book.

The author portrays the symptoms and effects of the illness in vivid detail. Significant portions of the narrative recount in disgusting detail the putrefaction of the adults' bodies. One doesn't suspect the author of being exploitative, but rather overly morbid.Read more ›
8 Comments 42 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe Flame Alphabet
By Brendan Moody VINE VOICE on December 23, 2011
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
At first glance, Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet, in which speech itself is the cause of an debilitating and ultimately fatal illness that causes the collapse of society, would seem to be a post-apocalyptic novel of an unusual kind. It is that, but it's also something more, as one realizes when the narrator reveals that he is an adherent of a bizarre (and completely fictitious) form of Judaism that involves solitary, secretive worship at isolated synagogue huts to which radio sermons are transmitted, sermons that are to be heard in silence and never discussed, not even with others listening to them at the same time. The disturbing strangeness of these practices, and of the way the language virus is described, make the novel as much a work of surrealism as a post-apocalyptic fiction. That surreal atmosphere does not, however, rule out moments of skillful psychological realism, with which Marcus captures the desperate desire of his characters to maintain the rituals of daily life even as the simplest communication becomes dangerous.

The language problem begins with children, whose words are all of a sudden physically painful. There's an obvious metaphor here for the pangs of child-rearing, and to some extent Marcus makes use of it. Narrator Samuel's daughter Esther was a hostile, unsentimental teenager whose relentlessly analytical rejection hurt her parents even before every word became a literal infection, and their arguments are recognizable without becoming trite or tedious. But as a metaphor and only a metaphor, the language virus would be unrealistic and hollow; instead, it has real bite.Read more ›
6 Comments 46 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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3.0 out of 5 starsNot Recommended
By Louis N. Gruber VINE VOICE on December 31, 2011
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
A bizarre plague, spread by language itself, is destroying humanity. Only children up to a certain age are immune. The contagion is somehow related to an obscure Jewish sect, whose members worship in little forest huts, receiving bizarre communications from obscure (and possibly fictitious) rabbis. Claire and Sam are among these people, desperately trying to cope with their daughter, Esther, whose venomous tirades are rapidly destroying them. So far, strange but vaguely believable. Then the story descends into some kind of literary madness. The problem, it seems, is language itself. Maybe thought itself. Sam crawls through unlikely adventures, searching for meaning, and things get progressively stranger.

I wouldn't want to spoil the plot for you, but I don't think there is one. The writing is apocalyptic, symbolic, but symbolic of what? That consciousness itself is doomed? I really have no idea. This is one book you'll have to read for yourself.

Author Ben Marcus writes well, his use of language original and imaginative, but he doesn't tell a good story. This one had great possibilities, but after the initial chapters became progressively unreadable. I could hardly force myself to finish the book. I think the novel will appeal to a small group of people, but it was too obscure for me. I can't recommend it. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber
3 Comments 39 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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4.0 out of 5 starsWordsmith extraordinaire
By hh on July 15, 2014
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Beautifully written, if not overwritten. I found the story line to be of minor significance relative to the writing itself, which is sublime (the storyline is unlikely to be appreciated as humorous by anyone not a jew or honorary jew -- it really is deeply, culturally bound and poke u in the eye darkly funny, but outside NY, perhaps not). The author has a true talent for putting words together, esp in this age of minimalism. Here, the words are put together to describe nasty things, but nonetheless, they are brilliantly composed and aesthetically placed in chains as if in a sentence museum. Rather than complete the book, I re-read the first 100 pages, more slowly the second time around, indulging myself by reading aloud when the house was empty, and felt I was given a rare treat by a master. This fellow should stick to short stories, 50 pages max. He would be the master of the genre, at least in terms of craft.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 starsWhat a pretentious waste of time

What a pretentious waste of time. I wish I hadn't spent my time finishing this terrible read. Author is just sooo precious and the result is that it is an obnoxious... Read more

Published 4 months ago by Laura A. Corrigan
3.0 out of 5 starsThis book started out so great, specifically in Part One

This book started out so great, specifically in Part One. I read the first third of the book in one sitting. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Emma Welsh
3.0 out of 5 starsNot great, not terrible, with some moments of startling dystopian...

I read the most incredible short story by Ben Marcus in the October 19, 2015 issue of The New Yorker, entitled "Cold Little Bird. Read more

Published 5 months ago by katydid
1.0 out of 5 starsmake a wise choice

I don't know why I kept on reading this book. It's does have merit in pointing out the divine nature of language. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Buffalo Gal
1.0 out of 5 starsJust a lot of painful experiences. Mr

Just a lot of painful experiences. Mr. Marcus seems to really like describing human pain and misery, which, to be fair, he's good at, but it becomes tiring.

Published 8 months ago by Sanjay V. Gopinath
3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

Pretty good read.

Published 10 months ago by Jessica R.
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Really amazing, but SO depressing.

Published 11 months ago by Dana Reinert
1.0 out of 5 starsWhy didn't I believe other reviewer?

When I finally finished, I thought to myself "What in the heck did I just read?" I had heard of this on NPR and it sounded interesting so I went ahead and ordered it for... Read more

Published 12 months ago by Cinnamon
2.0 out of 5 starsVery hard to get through

This was a good idea that was terribly painful to get through. It was so bad that I almost preferred walking on the treadmill with nothing to read rather than keep reading this,... Read more

Published 12 months ago by Joel Kramer
1.0 out of 5 starsThis book was terrible in so many ways

This book was terrible in so many ways. I powered through it hoping that it would redeem itself but in the end I regret wasting my time. Read more

Published 13 months ago by William

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