Night of Fire

by Colin Thubron

Award-winning, bestselling novelist and travel writer Colin Thubron returns to fiction with his first novel in more than a decade, a searing, poetic masterwork of memory.

A house is burning, threatening the existence of its six tenants—including a failed priest; a naturalist; a neurosurgeon; an invalid dreaming of his anxious boyhood; and their landlord, whose relationship to the tenants is both intimate and shadowy. At times, he shares their preoccupations and memories. He will also share their fate.

In Night of Fire, the passions and obsessions in a dying house loom and shift, from those of the hallucinating drug addict in the basement to the landlord training his rooftop telescope on the night skies. As the novel progresses, the tenants’ diverse stories take us through an African refugee camp, Greek Orthodox monasteries, and the cremation grounds of India. Haunting the edges of their lives are memories. Will these remembrances be consumed forever by the flames? Or can they survive in some form?

Night of Fire is Colin Thubron’s fictive a novel of exquisite beauty, philosophical depth, and lingering mystery that is a brilliant meditation on life itself.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Adult Fiction, British Literature, Novels

389 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 16, 2016

About the author

Colin Thubron, CBE FRSL is a Man Booker nominated British travel writer and novelist.

In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up .

This was an odd book, haunting really, a little eerie as each story unfolds and we learn about the characters pasts and their fate on this night when the building they live in is aflame. The landlord and the tenants each have a story, seemingly at first only connected by the fact that they live in this building that's on fire. I kept thinking there has to be more of a connection and the similarities of their names and their common address and variations of the same brother's name, and the appearance of butterflies became apparent. These similarities, though, were not the things that connected them for me.

When I first started to read this, I thought maybe I'd made a bad choice but the more I read, the more I found myself interested in the characters and the more I found something more complex or maybe in reality, it was more simple in the commonness of their humanity. It felt like a collection of short stories rather than a novel but yet there are things about each that made this a cohesive story. While it is not about the relationships these characters had with each other, it is very much about the relationships with the people in their lives . Each narrative is an introspective look at themselves, their desires, short comings, loneliness, so much about their memories. In some ways , it reminded me of a book called One Amazing Thing , where people connected only by their fate in a disaster tell something of themselves to each other, something that draws them closer in their common circumstance. I was even reminded of The Canterbury Tales, although it's been many years since I read that in college. What is different here is that the landlord, the priest, the neurosurgeon, the naturalist, the photographer, the schoolboy and the traveler tell the reader their stories and not each other, leaving the reader to determine how much alike they are, not just in the fate they face.

I have to admit I had a l had a love-hate relationship with this book . First I didn't like it, then I liked it, and this went on and my view in the end is that I'm glad I read it even though I may have missed what the author was trying to do with some of the mechanics. It definitely made me think about how little we know about the people we pass each day and that what we don't know may be the very thing that binds us . My initial 3.5 stars will be rounded up for the captivating writing and the fact that I'll think about this book for a while.

I received an advance copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

No review planned. Beautiful collection of life stories, one each for the residents of an apartment building that is burning down. Beautiful! if sad.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everybody lives differently in Colin Thubron’s new novel, but they all burn to death in the same way. “Night of Fire” is a collection of stories about the tenants in an old apartment building that’s consumed one evening while they sleep. Older or younger, loved or lonely, each of the victims initially ignores the pungent odor, awakens into smoldering confusion and then succumbs.

In that grim sense, “Night of Fire” may be the hottest novel of the year, but the real heat is generated by Thubron’s gorgeous prose and his reflections on the persistence of memory. Long celebrated for his travel writing — “Mirror to Damascus ” appeared 50 years ago — Thubron offers the kind of luxuriant sentences and philosophical ruminations that would feel antique if he weren’t so timelessly elegant. Having wandered the world, he presents a constellation of characters stuck in their rooms as the flames unmake them. Where, each story asks, does the. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
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[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this rubbed me the wrong way. I enjoyed some of the individual character arcs, but I was somewhat mystified as to any purpose behind the whole. It seemed like pretty pictures of a clever idea, distant and puffed. I couldn't seem to get close to the book as a whole and wondered about the bigger reason for reading that was never quite graspable to me.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a philosophically dense book, but I really enjoyed it.

Set in a burning Victorian house, the author grapples with the impermanence of memory, loss, interconnectedness, and identity. As each character senses the encroaching fire their subplots flash back to prior meaningful experiences in their lives.

Don't want to spoil anything, but the ending left me wondering. Not because there were loose ends, but because it opened the door for bigger spiritual questions.

Stylistically the book had a kind of ephemeral and peaceful quality to it, despite the chaotic and dangerous setting. I saw that Thubron was previously a travel writer which shines through beautifully in his descriptions of people and places.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never read anything so tediously enjoyable before. It's rewarding for the reader who pays attention to detail, but also tedious because it is a loosely-woven tapestry that is revealed slowly.

I received a free advance copy of this book with my Powell's Indiespensable subscription in late 2016. I'm glad that I waited to read it because I am not sure I would have made it through. Even now, I almost gave up several times in the first 50 pages, but I fortunately had a long February weekend to devote to the first half of the book. If I had to read it in short intervals, I don't think I would have made it through.

It wasn't just the amount of time that made a difference, but a change in my perspective over the time that this book sat on my shelf. I have suffered losses recently that have made me think more deeply about life and death. I also am a little more knowledgeable about Eastern philosophy. That's not to say I'm knowledgeable on the subject, but meditation and eastern spiritual beliefs are more familiar to me now than ever before. This book is best enjoyed with an open mind and with no rush to finish.

[Left Coast Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I might bump this up to five stars after it's settled in for a few days.

This is the second novel I've read in recent weeks (the other being Patrick Mondiano's In the Cafe of Lost Youth) in which we read several characters' stories and have to puzzle out for ourselves how they are connected. Mondiano's book, which won a Nobel Prize, actually seems rather thin compared to Night of Fire, which is a densely-woven tale indeed.

It's quite simple to describe what actually happens in this book. Somewhere in coastal England, in more-or-less modern times, an old wooden house is going up in flames. Seven tenants plus the landlord are trapped within, and the most important chapters of their lives are recounted.

This book made me feel kind of stupid, though, in that there are clearly connections being made between the characters that I am too dull-witted to understand. I think I need to re-read it with a notepad at hand to keep track of all the commonalities between characters. On a page-by-page basis, this is quite an interesting book, because Thubron is a great and sensitive observer of human behavior, and each story is compelling on its own. I have the feeling that a greater point is being made, but I'm too dense to figure it out.

In a way, it seems like one of those lanterns with different lenses going in different directions, and each character, though discussing the same ingredients, emphasizes them differently. It's as though Thubron is telling one core story but, like blind men feeling the elephant, each character only sees part of what is going on. Constants within each story include loss of parents, an older sibling, butterflies, a strange feeling that a curtain could open onto a new world (an illusion cruelly shattered), women with beautiful high cheekbones and slanted eyes, damage to the brain and other points that I'm forgetting.

At a few points in the story, I had an "A-ha!" moment and thought, okay, I know what he's doing here. But inevitably the next portion of the book would prove me wrong, and not just wrong but clay-footed for even thinking about such a simple, tidy 'solution' to what may not even be a solvable puzzle.

I really enjoyed reading this, and will doubtless read it again.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the roof of a house in London an amateur astronomer, and the landlord of those living in the flats below, watches the night sky. He reflects that what he sees through his telescope is not only fire but also the past, the light having taken uncountable years to reach him. Down below his tenants--priest, neurosurgeon, naturalist, photographer, schoolboy, and traveler--sleep. Each of them has a chapter in the novel which follows, their stories heavily weighted with memory and the past light which shined on what defines them. The landlord's meditations on fire and the past act as the spark setting the novel alight. It's more than that, though, because in the basement an undetected fire has begun inside a wall. The house is on fire.

As the individual stories of the 6 tenants are unfolded, many parallels come to light. Memory plays a part of every story, each being set in the past. Loss of memory is a concern, whether cannabis-induced in the photographer's case or surgically extracted by the neurosurgeon's removal of a brain tumor. Some of the later stories incorporate elements that allude to situations or characters in earlier stories, as the actress Linda in the photographer's story playing the part of a lesbian biologist recalls an important character in the naturalist's memory. The burning smell often experienced by epileptics, butterflies, and death by hanging are repeated. The layering and accumulation of themes build into the traveler's story where he remembers viewing cremations at the ghats alongside the Ganges in Varanasi. As the heads of the dead burst in the fire, as brains are spilled to flow into the Ganges, memory is released and the fire destroying the bodies is equated with the fire destroying the house. It's a terrible beauty framed in the end when the final landlord section unites all the themes and characters of the novel. This has been described as Thubron's masterpiece. I can believe it.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Colin Thubron is a well-known travel writer and recipient of several awards for his novels. Night of Fire (2017) is a beautiful book, scholarly without being dull (where else can you learn about neurosurgery, butterflies, and other arcana), captivating in its language, and with a vividly described and uniquely constructed theme. More rewards will certainly come Thubron’s way.

The theme of the book is memory—its mysterious formation, its fragile construction, and its ephemeral quality. Each of us is a collection of memories, all of which are perfectly firm in our minds but are in reality formed like a film editor’s splicing of different sections of film to create a specific impression. Our memories, fragile as they are, shape us and form the basis of our relationships; they define our lives. Yet when we die, they disappear with us.

Night of Fire is a collection of strangely interlocking short stories about some of those memories that took a lifetime to form and an instant to evaporate. The scene is a five-storey rooming house with seven residents: the landlord, a priest, a neurosurgeon, a naturalist, a photographer, a schoolboy, and a traveller. The house, a now ancient but once stately English mansion, is in the very early stages of fire. The book’s first sentence demonstrates the quality of Thubron’s writing,

It began with a spark, an electrical break like the first murmur of a weakening heart that would soon unhinge the body, until its conflagration at last consumed the whole building.

The characters in the novel have surprising similarities. You will find butterflies, brain surgery, maternal deaths, the priesthood, photography, and travel to exotic places are not just individual interests; they appear to have a collective quality binding the characters together in a loose confederacy. You will also find an unlikely similarity in names: among the characters are Stephen the priest, Stephanie the naturalist, Steve the photographer, and Steve the traveler; only one named character (Walford, the neurosurgeon) is not a variation of Stephen and two characters are unnamed (the landlord and the schoolboy). What is Thubron telling us?

Thubron delicately plays with our minds as he assesses the question of identity by connecting the characters together so that they seem to be one character, though that violates rational thought. Perhaps he is underlining our duality—our ability to be good or bad—just as the traveller in India stresses the duality of the Hindu pantheon,

This is an intriguing book, remarkably well written and thought provoking. Any book club devoted to stimulating discussion should put it high on the list of future reads.

Five Stars!

The remainder of this review will contain spoilers. For those put off by spoilers, STOP NOW and read the book. You’ll find it worthwhile.

The Landlord

The theme of the book—memory, identity, loss, and nostalgia—is set in the first chapter, where we meet the unnamed landlord on the balcony of his top floor penthouse; his wife, dying of emphysema, is asleep as he sets up his telescope to watch the arrival of a meteor shower—a predictable future event. While waiting he watches home movies of his past—equally predictable past events. But perhaps the past isn’t much easier to predict than the future, or so Thunbron would have us think; memory is slippery and there might be many pasts to remember.

As the landlord anticipates the near future of the meteor shower and revisits the past memories of his films, he senses a faint whiff of something burning; perhaps burning rubbish? The landlord’s musings will return at the end of the story.

The Priest

Stephen, an ex-priest of the protestant persuasion, remembers his days as a young seminarian, when his faith is shaken by two events. First is the announcement by a student in an open assembly that he is leaving, a shocking act of open defiance. Second is another student committing the unpardonable sin of suicide. The speaker at the service for the suicide is compassionate, saying, saying,

Thou knowest this man’s fall, but thou knowest not his wrestling; which perchance were almost that his very fall is justified and accepted of God.

But, Stephen recognizes,this creates a conundrum—if God forgives even the worst sin, what is the point of living a pure life to gain the reward of heaven?

Thubron’s extensive travels and his travel writing bring a keen eye to the book. Thus, Stephen vividly remembers a summer trip to Mount Athos, a peninsula in northern Greece where ancient Greek Orthodox monasteries still exist. He describes Mount Athos and its monasteries in beautiful detail. Following Mount Athos he and Victor, a fellow student, visit Rwanda to work at a Tutsi refugee camp during the devastating 1990s civil war between the Tutsis and Hutus. There he sees disease, death, and genocide at its worst, and falls in love with a doomed woman.

The Neurosurgeon

Walford is a neurosurgeon specializing in brain surgery to mitigate epileptic seizures. Walford sees the human brain as the great mystery of life, saying,

How does the brain, a lump of meat, convert into the great theater of human consciousness?

He sees patients as neural networks, not a people, because that is the only way to understand the brain and to psychologically accept the damage he must do if he is to do good—every operation is a triage, taking something away to get something in return: a male patient talks with God and has rapturous visions of God’s presence in all things, but Walford sees not God but a tumor in the hippocampus, the site of memory and emotion, and he knows that if his surgery succeeds the patient’s connection to God will probably end; a female patient is particularly concerned that if she has the operation she will lose the treasured memory of a love affair, but Walford again sees only the tumor in the hippocampus (though he does tell her that her memory might be lost). Is Wolford God, shaping humanity? Or is he undoing God’s work? Sadly, the flames consume him before we know the answer.

The Naturalist

Stephanie’s pet lorikeet announces that something is wrong, awakening her from memories of her teenage years with sister Louisa (the perfect one), mother (the one with leukemia), and father (the distant one who Stephanie felt, apparently wrongly, much preferred her sister). Stephanie is the dreamy daughter, far more interested in what is outside of her than in what is inside. Her uncle Arthur, a lepidopterist, has introduced her to the wondrous world of butterflies, and from that grows a love of nature in general, and of butterflies in particular.

On a butterfly-hunting trip Stephanie meets Samantha, a university biologist who becomes her life partner until Samantha’s death. With Samantha’s guidance Stephanie also becomes a biologist specializing in lepidoptery. Samantha and Stephanie will return in the memories of another tenant.

Stacks of her students’ papers are waiting to be graded as Stephanie takes flight before the fire reaches her. (As a former professor and department chairman, I can assure you that at least one parent will call the department chairman to say that it’s outrageous for a professor to die before papers are graded. Really!)

The Photographer

Steven occupies the basement flat, an area that is never cleaned, is filled with old and very flammable furniture, and is acrid from his overuse of drugs and alcohol. Often, at night he couldn’t wake up to save his life; this is one of those nights. What does Steven think about as the fire gets close while he sleeps?

Steven’s father is long gone and his mother, whom he idolized, died two months ago; this initiated his spiral from recreational drug use into serious drug abuse. Steven is a stranger to everyone— disconnected from others, attracted to women who he initially sees as perfect but whom he eventually leaves when their perfection wears off, which is usually when his photographs stop showing them as he would like to see them. Steven has clearly ignored his mother’s warning,

Steven, never idolize women!

Steven lived with his brother Richard after their mother’s death. We follow Steven through some his memorable relationships. First is Celia, his mother’s black caregiver, with whom he falls in love because she is beautiful and he sees her essence; but he drops her when the photographs stop showing that essence and she becomes real. Next is Linda, a struggling young actress he meets at a dance club, whose energy, beauty and, yes, essence, draw him; but, again, when the photos stop showing the essence she becomes too real for him (and, at 31, she’s clearly too old). Last is Rebecca, a beautiful, very young, and very naïve real estate agent he meets while photographing a wedding. Embarrassed at being just “the photographer,” he tells her that his name is David Sykes and that he is in a seminary where a friend had just committed suicide. When she eventually discovers his lies, she leaves him—though he imagines that he has killed her and put her under the floorboards.

During Steven’s pre-death reveries the story gets weird, becoming self-reflexive and looping back onto itself. Steven mimes the story of Stephen the priest when he tells Rebecca that he is a seminarian and that a fellow-student committed suicide. Linda acts in a play where her role is Samantha, a lesbian biologist named Samantha who is attracted to a young female lepidopterist. This reflexivity is intriguing; it will increase as the story develops.

The Schoolboy

The schoolboy is anything but that—he is now an old man, a semi-invalid awaiting a knee transplant. The smoke from the burning house has triggered memories of the campfire at the secret Serpent Society meetings when he was a nine-year old student at an English public school.

Squit (his school nickname) was sent to the school while his parents lived in Cyprus. On arriving he feels so abandoned that he tells a classmate that his parents are dead. The word spreads rapidly and soon the chaplain sits him down for a talk about heaven. Unaware that word of his orphancy has spread, Squit is slow to understand what motivates this strange sermon, but when he does his first thought is,

But they aren’t dead. They’re probably at a cocktail party in Nicosia.

What a wonderful line!

Squit is one of those kids on the periphery of the A-list. Among his friends are some admired kids, but Squit is late to be invited to join the coveted seven who form the Serpent Society of star worshippers led by an elected Wizard. Still, better ate than never; the Serpent Society is one of Squit's treasured memories. But long after he left the school he had a chance meeting with the former Wizard in his group, now a successful barrister. The Wizard remembered few of the details of school life that still hung heavily on Squit, and he had entirely forgotten about the all-important Serpent Society of which he was the Wizard. This causes the grown-up Squit to wonder about the value of memories—how could the simple passage of time erase such important memories? How could people who shared a common experience have entirely different recollections?

We never learn what career the schoolboy followed, though we do learn that it might have involved the priesthood, butterflies, photography, or international travel. We do know that the schoolboy will not get the knee replacement.

The Traveller

Steven, the traveller, lives on the fourth floor. He was born in the northern India town of Simla circa 1940, the second son of a British administrator during the Raj. His father, an aspiring British civil servant, was forever angry about Indian independence because it deprived him of his career.

Steven became an inveterate traveler while his brother Ricky became a successful businessman. Steven had been a married schoolteacher who took early retirement when his wife divorced him. This left him free to do what he loved most—to travel the world visiting exotic places and enjoying the variety of cultures, geographies, and mores the world has to offer. His brother Ricky does not understand this proclivity. (Note that the Steven-Ricky brotherhood in the traveler’s life reflects back to the Steven-Richard relationship in the photographer’s life).

In his later years Steven has an operation to remove a glioblastoma in his brain. His mother dies and after two years pass Steven takes a pilgrimage to Simla to revisit the place of his parent’s youth. Ricky joins him carrying the family scrapbooks so they can revisit the exact places. Ricky arrives in a bad mood, having just gone through a divorce and also receiving the news that he’d been fired from the board of his company—something about financial records. As Steven and Ricky ruminate over the photographs and other record of their past, we are reminded of the landlord watching the home movies of his earlier days.

Steven’s travels and his time in India have introduced him to the ancient notion of duality. Among his last thoughts is of the Hindu pantheon of gods,

Vishnu, the preserver, is the benign manifestation of Shiva, the destroyer, who himself creates even as he ravages. They are each, in a sense, one another. Shiva’s consort is the gentle Parvati, who may revert at any moment to her alter ego, Kali, the blood-stained goddess of dissolution.

Steven’s first reaction to the fire is to save his memorabilia, to pass on his memories by dropping them from his fourth-storey window. But

Only minutes after he had stripped his walls of their traveller’s mementoes — the house was burning under him, his brain reeling — he had forgotten that he’d dropped even his Persian vases and Nepalese Buddha into the flower beds below. Choking, he could not raise himself from the sofa. He imagined smoke pouring into the absence where his memory should be. He was staring at bare walls. There was no evidence of his journeys. No evidence, in his suffocating mind, of himself, who might only be sights and sensations, and the horizon he had not yet reached.

In short, we are all toast in the end.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel about a fire engulfing an apartment house, with a bunch of residents trapped inside. The book is structured like a series of short stories where each of the trapped residents' lives flash before their eyes, and you learn all about them and their pasts.

This is a cerebral, literary book for someone smarter than me. It almost reminded me of Cloud Atlas in that there are 6 or so different stories about different people, and yet, they are all... somehow... intertwined. The "somehow" is the part that was over my head to some degree. I think it was not entirely fleshed out, but a number of the characters had the same or similar names, and they floated into and out of each others' life histories in a way that was (purposely, I think) unclear.

One character ends up as a character in a play being portrayed by an actress in one of the other stories. One character invents a web of lies about his life that exactly describes one of the other character's real life stories. The last story is all about Tibetan Buddhism, which I believe is a way the author is saying, "don't think too hard about how all this is related... it's all wheels within wheels". (Or else I'm too dumb to catch all his drifts). In any case, it was an interesting approach, where you, the reader, keep thinking, "wait, IS this character the same as this other character? No? Maybe? Does it matter". Kind of a fun mental exercise.

It's a very dense, mesmerizing (and yet, dull in certain parts), cerebral novel.

[Matt Sadorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book from Powell's Books when I began a subscription service there so I could get an autographed copy of Moonglow by Michael Chabon. I immediately read the back of it and thought it sounded very interesting and happily added it to the To Read Pile.

When I got to it, I found myself liking it, much as I thought I would, but then I realized that I enjoyed it more and more as I proceeded through the pages.

An apartment house is home for a handful of people, all from various aspects of life, and all with only one seeming thing in common, the house they live in. When the house starts on fire we get to peer into the lives of all the tenants and learn about them and how life shaped them up until that point.

At first I thought it was a clever collection of short stories, but then I started to put connections together. There were aspects that weaved in and out of the narratives in clever ways that made me sit up and take notice. Once I had taken notice, then I began to think and reflect and try to see just how things could be as they were, which made me enjoy it even more.

There is a beauty in the sadness that permeates some of the lives I encountered, and that was what resonated with me the most. I cared about these characters and their lives, and the writing was the main reason for it all.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very clever in an unexpected way. When the inside cover said that the tenants of this burning house are connected, I thought that maybe they would be related in some way. But their connections actually are the themes of their lives: memory, love, loss, religion, and even some recurring encounters with things and places like butterflies and theaters. They're all totally unrelated and distinct people, but their life histories converge in these themes. And the landlord, who may or may not be a real person, encapsulates them all. I didn't really like that- the lives of the tenants were so real that I was caught off guard by how the landlord counts their memories (not just thematically similar memories, but actually their memories) among his own. I also thought the interest of the tenants' stories tapered off towards the end; the first three tenants were amazing, the photographer was vivid but unlikable, the schoolboy was interesting, and the traveller was meh. They were all good, but best towards the beginning.

[Greg Schott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to agree with the others that have reviewed this book that I was confused as to where it was going when I first started reading it, but by the time you finish the neurosurgeon chapter things start to fall into place.

This novel functions so well on many different levels. I was really amazed by the interconnected relationships - some obvious and others very subtle. You have to keep track of all the characters which is a little challenging but really makes the book that much better.

It also has several brilliant themes running through it as he draws parallels between each of the characters in the house. This is a great book if you are looking for something different that will make you think about it well after you have finished it. I give it a 4.4.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I am still confused about what was really going on in it. I think understand, but I wish someone else I know would read it so I could talk to them about it. I really enjoyed the way this books was written and I think Colin Thubron did a great job getting the readers into the characters lives and psyches. I think the ending could have made things clearer for the reader but if what I think happened happened it is a very clever book - I'm just not sure - which I think is a problem.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really knowing anything about the author, I was intrigued about their writing style.

Night of Fire is about a fire consuming a house, as per the image and the retelling of many lives that dwell there, the Landlord, Priest, neurosurgeon, Naturalist, Photographer, Schoolboy and Traveller.

To be honest I have no idea whether I like or not, as it left me wondering. I cannot fault it that it wasn't well researched in terminology usage for the different charaters but the characters were...Well stereotyped and not much fleshed out and seems very samey. But there again it might of been that way to suggest something that wasn't meant to be obvious but suggestive? Still it left me wondering did I like it, hence 3 stars.

[Corla Moses · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and emotionally captivating. It's complexity captures that of the human experience

[David Lutes · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's really a collection of short stories with a clumsy conceit trying to tie them together. Conceit bad, stories good.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5? There was much I liked in here, enough so that I finished it even as my appreciation began to recede. Thematically, it's a big, dense, meaning-heavy book, but there are authorial machinations that distract from that, including having several characters have the same name and having some POV changes from third to first that are jarring and not really necessary.

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Night of Fire by Colin Thubron is a recommended story of seven lives.

The old Victorian house that was divided into apartments years ago is on fire. Night of Fire delves into the lives of the tenants who will be dying in the fire on this night. The inhabitants whose life stories are told include a failed priest, a neurosurgeon, a naturalist, a photographer, a school boy, a traveller, and the landlord. The landlord has two chapters, one at the beginning and the end. The rest of the victims and their lives are covered in long chapters devoted to them. The basement tenant is mentioned, but as a victim who died immediately. Thubron uses the musings and recollections of these people to explore life's essential questions, memories and seeking answers to find a deeper meaning in their existence. All of them are either named Steven or some derivative of the name: Stephen, Steve, Stephanie.

While beautifully written, I was left detached and unable to connect with the stories of these people. The setting, in a burning house, where you know these people are all going to die, never coalesced for me into a cohesive whole. The long chapters on the lives of these various tenants are all like short stories until their fate is met. I would concede that perhaps I need to contemplate Night of Fire more to divulge more meaning and connections between characters, but it also left me with no burning desire to do so. The rating is based on the quality of the writing and the fact that I found some of the stories very intriguing and captivating, just not all of them.

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.

[Alyssia Cooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel is a victim of style over substance. It’s certainly an intriguing premise but the seven individual stories are completely unrelated and have absolutely no purpose. Some of the themes randomly carry over but these are jarring rather than effective; when no pertinent details pass over, for specific themes like memory and the loss thereof to pass through just struck me as odd.

Admittedly, some of the different tales are quite interesting but it reads more like a collection of short stories than an actual novel. Without any link other than the place in which they live and the date and means of their death, the entire thing doesn’t have any seams or joints. It all slots rather awkwardly together and just tells the life story of each individual for no real benefit or overarching narrative.

It is well written, but I somehow get the sense that this was written with literary awards in mind. It therefore tries to be literary at the expense of actually having a narrative. The language is flowery and poetic and the author manages to cover some interesting themes as well as slotting you into the minds of seven very different people, but ultimately it has no point and it doesn’t go anywhere.

The author clearly has talent but I think he needs to remember that the point of telling a story is to actually tell a story... this well, doesn’t. It tells seven unlinked tales of lives lived and lost; their regrets and their mistakes, their childhoods and their coming of age. It clumsily glues them together with shared themes and echoes that linger in following tales, but doesn’t manage to knit them into a convincing narrative strand.

[Barbara Q · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is actually a series of portraits / reminiscences of seven people. They are all tenants in a rooming house when catastrophe strikes. A few thin threads run through some of the stories but each stands on its own. Good writing from a well known author.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars (I'm in a generous mood, so I'm saying 4 for the rating)

"Night of Fire," as the title implies, takes place the night of a fire. An apartment building has set fire, and each chapter focuses on a different resident of the building. The chapters begin in the present--what they are doing, thinking, etc., when the fire hits--and then explores some pivotal memories of theirs. There is almost a "Life flashing before your eyes before you die" feel, although rather than a full trajectory, a key vignette or set of vignettes. Who in these memories will be there to remember those who die? Do these memories, repositories of knowledge, emotions, etc., die with them in the fire? Thubron's writing style has an attractive lyricism, which makes the book an attractive, engaging, and quick-moving read. Not all chapters resonate equally. The chapter "Schoolboy" struck me as strange because, while the other chapters centered on a defining identity of the person in question (often, an occupation), that one did not. He was not, in fact, a schoolboy when he died--not for decades. The final chapter on the landlord is very brief and lacks the development of the others.

The book may not quite be greater than the sum of its parts, but it was still an enjoyable read.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've found myself in a cycle where I have found myself reading award winning and best of books and finding myself let down. This book was another. Did I like it? Was it enjoyable? Would I recommend it? I don't know the answers to any of those questions.

This book is the seven intermingled stories of seven people living in a old house that has been subdivided into apartments. The house has caught fire and each chapter is the story of the tenant first noticing the fire and ends with the tenant succumbing to the blaze. In the middle, the story of each tenants life, or part of it, is told.

The tenants all share similarities and there are themes that connect all the stories. Some of the stories are interesting, some are boring and some raise questions that aren't answered.

[Dan Claffey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an advanced reader's copy that I received through Powell's Indiespensable program.
I have mixed feelings about this book. Essentially a collection of short stories about characters that share no connection other than the fact that they all live in the same apartment building that is burning and they will all die inside of. While the stories themselves were OK, the lack of continuity really prevents this from being a great book.
Of course I may have simply missed the connection and someone smarter than me will have to explain.

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really did not enjoy reading this book. It was incredibly boring and hard to get through. I would read a few pages, put it down, and find it very difficult to get through. I didn’t like how it was like a few short stories in one book. Before reading I thought there would be some sort of overlap between the characters but there wasn’t. I only became mildly interested in the book when reading The Naturalist’s section (which is halfway through the book, and I believe waiting that long for a book to get interesting isn’t a good read). Overall I would not recommend.

[Anne Goodwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I changed my mind about this novel several times in the course of my reading and ended up profoundly impressed.
Full review http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/...

[Glen U · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Night of Fire" was another book that is very hard to review. In looking at prior readers ratings about this book, they range from two stars to five stars. The writing itself is exquisite. Colin Thubron is an amazing talent, bringing his characters to full fruition, his scenes and situations are totally enveloping, his prose is beautiful and will satisfy the literary needs of any reader. His mapping of the plotline is subtle and clever, for most of the book, and I think that is where the problem is. For a reader that wants a linear line from beginning to end, straightforward plot and neatly tied conclusion, this book will be wholly unsatisfying. There seems to be a tenuous thread connecting what seems to be a series of short stories, and in the end, Thubron seems to note this, and, for me, is heavy handed in his concluding vignettes. For the more careful reader, who has reveled in the unraveling of the novels secrets, it was unnecessary. Still, it was a very engaging read and an excellently written book, covering many themes that deal with the human condition and the human psyche. I liked it!

[JANEY MCGEARY · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't pretend to understand this book completely. It has layers and layers - would have been fun to read in school and dissect all that is going on. So, ostensibly, it's about a grand old home, turned into apartments, that is burning in the middle of the night. No spoiler to say that none of the tenants survives. The book opens and closes with the landlord, whose rooms are on the top floor. The house is near the ocean, and he has an elaborate telescope set up on the rooftop. His memories contain bits of the memories of each of his tenants, and his tenants have mysterious connections with one another, both through names (Steven and Richard, and their variations) and through imagery - a seminarian suicide, upslanting eyes, butterflies, a sense of "other". Each tenant recalls memories that formed them, and there is an almost dream-like quality to the reminisces. The landlord has old film - from his life - that also seems to be from the lives of his tenants. Perhaps the house on fire is a metaphor for a person, reaching the end of life, and each of the tenants is a part of that person, connected in deep and mysterious ways, but also separate.

[Patrick Byrne · Rating 5 out of 5]

an incredible evocation of the approach of death

This is a book of marvels. With his deep experience of travel and the wandering soul Thubron captures four lives on a shared pathway to an awful incineration. Or is it awful? Some of the lives are rich and worthwhile, while some are touched by anomy. They all seem to approach their deaths with a touch of equanimity. The landlord of the doomed house is a skilled amateur astronomer and he connects us with the limitless enormity of the universe, before he too meets his fate. Thubron is a polymath and the book is brilliantly researched. Neurological, artistic and religious perspectives on death are set into a beautiful if ultimately very depressing scenario. The characters span both the globe and profound internal worlds. The writing is fluid and effervescent with color and vitality. I felt after ten pages that I was reading one of the most brilliant and masterly books of the 21st century. This impression lasted to the very last syllable. This is an amazing achievement and the best book I have read in 20 years.

[Denny · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is another of the books that i found while browsing the NYT sunday book review. it is the story of 6 people (a failed priest, neurosurgeon, photographer, retired teacher who travels the world, a naturalist obsessed with butterflies, the landlord who nightly searches the sky with a high powered telescope) who are tenants in an apartment house in an unnamed city. they have little interaction and know very little about each other but they all will die on the "night of fire". their stories are told in vignettes which at first seem to be as unrelated as their lives but soon you begin to think that there are little instances that relate to previous stories: butterflies, a lost of memory because of brain surgery, a friend who hanged himself, an actress playing the part of a lesbian professor. the author, colin thubron, is a well known travel writer and his descriptions of the locations in the novel reflect his expertise. it is a well written almost poetic book that would make a great book for a book club looking for a challenging read.