Slow Burn

by Sabina Murray

Slow Burn follows the story of Isobel della Fortuna, party regular, society member, illegitimate daughter of a powerful man. As Isobel struggles to find security and belonging in the Manila scene of the Marcos-era mid-eighties, we glimpse a culture that is brilliant in its horrific glory, although at the brink of extinction.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Sabina Murray was born in 1968 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is of mixed parentage—her mother a Filipina from Manila, her father a former Jesuit scholastic turned anthropologist from Boston. Her parents met in Washington DC, where both were pursuing graduate degrees. At the age of two she moved to Perth with her family, when her father accepted a position at the University of Western Australia. In 1980 the family moved again, this time to Manila, to be closer to her mother’s family. Although Sabina Murray is an American citizen, she did not live again in the United States until she attended college. She feels that she moves easily through the various cultures that have forged her own identity: Australian, Filipino, and American. She now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family, where she directs, and teaches in, the Creative Writing Program at Umass.

In 1989, Murray’s novel, Slow Burn, set in the decadent Manila of the mid-eighties, was accepted for publication, when Murray was twenty years old. Later, she attended the University of Texas at Austin where she started work on The Caprices, a short story collection that explores the Pacific Campaign of WWII. In 1999, Murray left Texas for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she had a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. In January, 2002, Murray published The Caprices, which won the PEN Faulkner Award.

Murray’s next novel, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, follows Katherine Shea, a woman of strange appetites, as she moves from man to man ruminating on the nature of cannibalism in western history, literature and art. The book is a dark comedy that is concerned with power and hunger. Forgery is her most recent book, and this looks at authenticity by following Rupert Brigg, who is exploring art and escaping grief in Greece in the early sixties. Both novels were Chicago Tribune Best Books.

Her most recent book, Tales of The New World, a collection of short stories with an interest in explorers, was released by Grove/​Black Cat in November, 2011. She is hard at work on a novel that looks at the friendship between the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement and the artist Herbert Ward.

Murray is also a screenwriter and wrote the script for the film Beautiful Country, released in 2005. Beautiful Country follows the story of Binh, a young Amerasian man who comes to the U.S. from Vietnam in search of the father he never knew. Terrence Malick commissioned Murray to write the screenplay.

Murray has been a Michener Fellow at UT Austin, a Bunting fellow at Radcliffe, a Guggenheim Fellow, and has received the PEN/​Faulkner Award, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant, a Umass Research and Creativity Award, and a Fred Brown Award for The Novel from the University of Pittsburgh. Beautiful Country was nominated for a Golden Bear and the screenplay was nominated for an Amanda Award (the Norwegian Oscars!) and an Independent Spirit Award.

Reviews

[Jaymee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't care much for any of the characters. The novel was filled with places that the rich and famous go to, yet they're not really described but merely mentioned. Fancy hotels, restaurants, places where they have their summer houses. Throw in a couple of sleazy areas/streets, and you have yourself a whole new world for the foreign audience. I liked the emptiness and shallowness of the parties and the wealth, but this could have been delivered better, had the descriptions been better, and the characters more developed (simply mentioning that there were politicians, old money, etc. don't count). Felt like just another exotic Philippine (no beaches, at least!) novel, this time from the perspective of the rich and famous.

[Tracy Fischer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tedious. How does this have almost 4 stars?!

[bebe go]

i like it because hindi sya baduy!!

[Ridley COrtes]

nice

[Angie Seffker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark but well written. Short and worth the read.

[Rachel]

Read aloud to Don on way back from Chicago