Burning

by Diane Johnson

Bel Air is a wealthy community nestled in the hills outside of Los Angeles. It is here, among the pastel stucco houses and palm trees, that Bingo Edwards, the New Age wife of an orthopedic surgeon, lives a sheltered and eccentric life raising chickens and box turtles. Her harmonious existence is disrupted when the local fire department arrives to remove the hazardous backyard privacy hedges which have protected her from the outside world. Uprooting the hedges exposes Bingo all too well to her neighbors, an unconventional Beverly Hills psychiatrist and his eccentric patients. She also finds herself in the company of strangers, particularly a magnificently handsome fireman who has made it his personal crusade to "service" many of the housewives on Bellagio Road. As the situation heats up for everyone, an enormous fire threatens to consume Bel Air and in the process, destroy Bingo

Genres: Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Diane Johnson is an American novelist and essayist whose satirical novels often feature American heroines living in contemporary France. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Persian Nights in 1988.
In addition to her literary works, she is also known for writing the screenplay of the 1980 film The Shining together with its director and producer Stanley Kubrick.

Reviews

[Kat Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than the last Diane Johnson I read, but not by much. More farcical than comedic. Reminiscent of David Lodge or Tom Sharpe. This novel is about smoldering passions, addictions and madness amidst the dry heat of California just waiting for the spark to set off the conflagration.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comic and tragic and packed with action. Barney and Bingo Edwards live rather quietly in the hills of LA until they are required to chop down their hedge for fire concerns. They can now look directly down upon their neighbor's house, owned by Hal and Irene Harris. Hal Harris is a psychotherapist who treats his patients by giving them hallucinogenic drugs. He sees his patients in his house and leaves them alone while they are tripping so that he can take care of his plants, which in fact he cares about more than people. The book has dark undercurrents (mothers neglecting their children, hack engineers considering killing junkies with their worthless inventions) but overall it is funny. I believe Johnson, when it was published, said it was "about despair," which I don't see. Oh, the problems of the educated first world! Salon.com describes Johnson's protagonists as "well-meaning but complacent middle-class women of vaguely liberal political inclinations who are jolted out of their comfortable worldviews by disruptive events."

[Sawyergal Sawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you have a self?
Is there much to know?

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

"pretty good"