The Burning Book

by maggie-gee

Book by Gee, Maggie

Genres: Fiction, Novels

Paperback

First published September 19, 1983

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls]

The threat of nuclear extinction is once more casting a pall over our fracturing and frightening world. Maggie Gee’s brilliant 1983 novel is a powerful reminder that the horror of Hiroshima must never take place again. A tremendously intimate family epic, The Burning Book navigates three generations of two families, with Lorna and Henry—two working class parents from Acton—at the centre, as Gee explores the familial conflicts, failures to love, and the slow drifting disappointments within their lives. An impending nuclear catastrophe is alluded to throughout the novel, with references to the sufferings of Hiroshima, leading to a devastating climax written in fragments of broken Beckettian poetry. The picture Gee paints of the family is fairly melancholy, her tone compassionate and humorous, and a slight narrative distance is taken in full knowledge of her poor characters’ fates.

[Eleanor]

I’ve never been more conflicted on a book. Obviously the themes are meant to be discursive, but it’s also my thoughts on the quality of the book. On the one hand, it does some very clever things. Some of the writing is beautiful. At other parts it sparks visceral cringe within me. It is somehow so self-aware and yet also infuriatingly blind and self-righteous. It is problematic but goes almost to the point of being aware of itself as a constructed gaze…and then goes too far and crosses into the realm of the problematic again. It speaks silently about things and yet also overwrites and says too much. It doesn’t trust its own form enough, and yet it is often egotistically confident in its own cleverness.

[Erin]

*3.5*

Really grew on me a lot towards the ending. Might have to reread this one day and hopefully I will like it more then.

[Melissa]

I read this book when I was in high school and it still remains one of the best, beautifully written books I have ever read

[Keith Miller]

Burning Book by Maggie Gee (1984)

[Milly]

I read this when I was 15 and I never forgot.

[Alice]

Breathtaking, raw and beautiful. This one will stay with me. Want to read more Maggie Gee NOW!