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Fox Fires
A lost girl, an automaton and a sprawling map of a beguiling, unsettling city.
Wren Lithgow has been following her concert pianist mother around the cities of Europe for almost two decades. When they arrive in the mysterious city-state of O, where she was conceived during the civil war, Wren resolves to track down the man she believes is her father.
As the city closes in around her, Wren gives herself over to a place of which she understands nothing but to which she feels a profound connection in a story of the watchers and the watched, the ways in which we conceive of home and, finally, the possibility of living on our own terms.
Wren Lithgow has been following her concert pianist mother around the cities of Europe for almost two decades. When they arrive in the mysterious city-state of O, where she was conceived during the civil war, Wren resolves to track down the man she believes is her father.
As the city closes in around her, Wren gives herself over to a place of which she understands nothing but to which she feels a profound connection in a story of the watchers and the watched, the ways in which we conceive of home and, finally, the possibility of living on our own terms.
- GenresFiction
188 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2021
1 person is currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
Wyl Menmuir
11 books67 followersWyl Menmuir is an award-winning author based in Cornwall. His 2016 debut novel, The Many was longlisted for the Man-Booker Award and was an Observer Best Fiction of the year pick. His second novel Fox Fires was published in 2021 and his short fiction has been published by Nightjar Press, Kneehigh Theatre and National Trust Books and appeared in Best British Short Stories. Wyl's first full-length non fiction book, The Draw of the Sea, won the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors and is published in 2022. A former journalist, Wyl has written for Radio 4’s Open Book, The Guardian and The Observer, and the journal Elementum. He is co-creator of the Cornish writing centre, The Writers’ Block and lectures in creative writing at Falmouth University.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 5, 2021
This novel is published by the Cromer in North Norfolk small press Salt Publishing who (and I think this is critical to this novel) “believe books are key to developing an imaginative life, and that the imagination is key to being fully human.”
Their website has a feature on “A History of Salt in Ten Books” and one of the ten is their Booker longlisting in 2016 for Wyl Menmuir’s “The Many” (astonishingly given the congolmerate publishers inbuilt dominance of the Booker, their second longlisting in four years after Alison Moore’s “The Lighthouse”).
I very much enjoyed reading the memorable and hunting “The Many” for much of its length when it seemed part allegory, part fantasy – but struggled a little with what seemed like a rather unsatisfying and unnecessary part resolution of the mystery at its heart.
This is the author’s second novel and I have to say one I found to possess the strengths of his debut and not its weakness.
It is a book which will I think appeal to fans of Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and Ishiguro’s “The Unconsoled” and seems to draw on elements of each – although in fact the author has not read either.
The main character of the book is Wren Lithgow – the daughter of a charismatic and eccentric concert pianist Cleo who has had a rather peripatetic childhood following her mother from European city to European city, and with an upbringing rather shared with the support community around her mother (and of which she is now part – having a key role in helping her mother settle in each new City).
Cleo refuses to discuss Wren’s father – other than that he comes from the City-State of O and was conceived there shortly before her mother fled a civil war. Wren has two traces of her father – a photo she has discovered and a now-broken mechanical doll (a dolls she has named Araidne).
At the book’s start, the 19 year old Wren (more than half her mother’s age) arrives in O – the mysterious City-State has opened its borders to the outside world and Cleo has been persuaded to return to play in a concert.
Wren’s aims though, armed with the doll and the picture, are to find her father. However the peculiarities of O (its unique language - O’Chian, its labyrinth like streets woven through with the sinuous side-branches of its river the Meret, its society still seemingly bound by strict rules and secrecy despite its apparent opening up, the suppressed and unacknowledged memories of the Civil War, its surveillance and mysterious posters, and above all its lack of any maps) all make her quest much harder than she expected.
She does however find that the figure of Araidne is perhaps more important than she realised – linked to a legend (and ubiquitous artistic image in the City – the Daughter of O). The book’s title Fox Fires it taken from the Japanese Kitsunebi (狐火) – misleading and mysterious lights which can lure people from their chosen path.
We do get some insights into Wren’s family and into who is telling her story but are left with a satisfying sense of openness at the book’s end.
This is a book about legend and stories, about watching and being watched, about belonging, about memory and suppression, about a search for identity and meaning in a world of change and movement. Ultimately about what it means to be human and how imaginative writing can help us explore it.
Highly recommended – potentially a Booker contender and definitely a contender I would think for the RSL Encore Award for Second Novels and the Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses.
Their website has a feature on “A History of Salt in Ten Books” and one of the ten is their Booker longlisting in 2016 for Wyl Menmuir’s “The Many” (astonishingly given the congolmerate publishers inbuilt dominance of the Booker, their second longlisting in four years after Alison Moore’s “The Lighthouse”).
I very much enjoyed reading the memorable and hunting “The Many” for much of its length when it seemed part allegory, part fantasy – but struggled a little with what seemed like a rather unsatisfying and unnecessary part resolution of the mystery at its heart.
This is the author’s second novel and I have to say one I found to possess the strengths of his debut and not its weakness.
It is a book which will I think appeal to fans of Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and Ishiguro’s “The Unconsoled” and seems to draw on elements of each – although in fact the author has not read either.
The main character of the book is Wren Lithgow – the daughter of a charismatic and eccentric concert pianist Cleo who has had a rather peripatetic childhood following her mother from European city to European city, and with an upbringing rather shared with the support community around her mother (and of which she is now part – having a key role in helping her mother settle in each new City).
Cleo refuses to discuss Wren’s father – other than that he comes from the City-State of O and was conceived there shortly before her mother fled a civil war. Wren has two traces of her father – a photo she has discovered and a now-broken mechanical doll (a dolls she has named Araidne).
At the book’s start, the 19 year old Wren (more than half her mother’s age) arrives in O – the mysterious City-State has opened its borders to the outside world and Cleo has been persuaded to return to play in a concert.
Wren’s aims though, armed with the doll and the picture, are to find her father. However the peculiarities of O (its unique language - O’Chian, its labyrinth like streets woven through with the sinuous side-branches of its river the Meret, its society still seemingly bound by strict rules and secrecy despite its apparent opening up, the suppressed and unacknowledged memories of the Civil War, its surveillance and mysterious posters, and above all its lack of any maps) all make her quest much harder than she expected.
She does however find that the figure of Araidne is perhaps more important than she realised – linked to a legend (and ubiquitous artistic image in the City – the Daughter of O). The book’s title Fox Fires it taken from the Japanese Kitsunebi (狐火) – misleading and mysterious lights which can lure people from their chosen path.
We do get some insights into Wren’s family and into who is telling her story but are left with a satisfying sense of openness at the book’s end.
This is a book about legend and stories, about watching and being watched, about belonging, about memory and suppression, about a search for identity and meaning in a world of change and movement. Ultimately about what it means to be human and how imaginative writing can help us explore it.
Highly recommended – potentially a Booker contender and definitely a contender I would think for the RSL Encore Award for Second Novels and the Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses.
June 9, 2021
The reason I bought this novel was because I enjoyed his last, the Booker longlisted The Many so very much. I loved this one too.
The first thing to love is the slow build. That is quite a rarity in these days of shortening attention. You don’t realise at first just how much you are being drawn into the story and the strange world that is being created on the page.
Other things to love are the setting, the city in which everything happens. It has both familiar elements and unsettling ones which disorientate the reader. This starts by not giving the city a name. It is simply called O. By not placing it anywhere specific, we are always slightly off balance in our reading. Trying to find a real parallel. Is it somewhere in Eastern Europe? The point is that this doesn’t matter. It is only you, the reader, struggling to place yourself.
There have been other places called O. Kleist wrote about the Marquise of O which I remember as being something my university flatmates hated, while the History of O was a French soft porn and bondage potboiler published in the 1950s. Now we have a new O.
Wren Lithgow arrives in O with her mother in late September. They come by ship. The city could be like many others she has lived in; Antwerp, Rotterdam, Marseille, Athens, Trieste. By listing all these, we have points of reference – a lovely touch. Wren’s mother, Cleo, is a concert pianist, she travels the world living off credit until it runs out and it is time to move on. Cleo has come to O to play concerts. Wren is there to find out about her unknown father.
There are three sections to the book: I The Wind-up Girl, II The Book of Maps and III A Photograph of Wren Lithgow. The wind-up girl is a small mechanical doll, for which the wind-up key has been lost. It is called Ariadne. It is the only memento Wren has of her father. She takes it to a clock maker to see if he can discover anything by taking it apart and perhaps getting it to work again. She has little to go on in the hunt for her father besides the statue and an old photo with a hard to read name on the back. After a short time staying in the apartment loaned to her mother, Wren takes all the cash she can find and enters the city on her own.
The city is a major character in the book. It is a Kafkaesque Prague-like presence, with a deeply sinister side. Wren soon discovers that there are no maps. These have been outlawed by an Orwellian state that lurks in the shadows. The city has been under constant threat of invasion and to protect itself has removed every map. This turns into an obsession for Wren, who eventually begins to create her own maps, at first on paper and then on the wall of her room.
Living in a tiny hotel, at first the only sanctuary for Wren is the library, although she doesn’t speak the language. There she meets the mysterious character of Alexis and the two become lovers. She has made her own map of the route to the hotel and the library, but Alexis burns this, saying it is forbidden, against the law. If she is found with a map she could be detained and deported. The brooding presence of control is manifested in the nightly curfew. Alexis is a photographer, and we gradually discover he is employed by the state to take photographs of people of interest.
Winter comes, the rivers freeze and heating doesn’t always work. Wren leaves Alexis, suspicious of his motivations. She changes her clothes, shaves her hair and moves to a strange old room in an obscure district.
Then suddenly in part three there is a wonderful shift. Wren is looking at a noticeboard for a place to live.
Up to this point we have always been in the third person, an all-seeing narrator. This sudden switch to first person is unexpected, shocking and sinister. It is also almost subtle enough to miss there on page 124. Out of nowhere!
The start of Chapter 17 is beautifully done:
Suddenly this new narrator is everywhere and not being cautious about revealing little things about himself. Wren continues to search for her father.
Wren looks out of the large window of her room, observing other windows and within them washing lines and dirty cups.
Menmuir does a wonderful job of bringing the threats closer and closer. Then a photograph of Wren appears on a poster with the slogan SHE SEES YOU, the new daughter of O. Symbol of revolution perhaps? Capturing something that is, as yet, only in the air.
I have already given too much away, but I won’t spoil the ending or the details. All I will say is how good a read this is, and how much it creates and beautifully captures an atmosphere, a tension within the city of O. I need to read this again, as I am sure there is so much I missed the first time.
The first thing to love is the slow build. That is quite a rarity in these days of shortening attention. You don’t realise at first just how much you are being drawn into the story and the strange world that is being created on the page.
Other things to love are the setting, the city in which everything happens. It has both familiar elements and unsettling ones which disorientate the reader. This starts by not giving the city a name. It is simply called O. By not placing it anywhere specific, we are always slightly off balance in our reading. Trying to find a real parallel. Is it somewhere in Eastern Europe? The point is that this doesn’t matter. It is only you, the reader, struggling to place yourself.
There have been other places called O. Kleist wrote about the Marquise of O which I remember as being something my university flatmates hated, while the History of O was a French soft porn and bondage potboiler published in the 1950s. Now we have a new O.
Wren Lithgow arrives in O with her mother in late September. They come by ship. The city could be like many others she has lived in; Antwerp, Rotterdam, Marseille, Athens, Trieste. By listing all these, we have points of reference – a lovely touch. Wren’s mother, Cleo, is a concert pianist, she travels the world living off credit until it runs out and it is time to move on. Cleo has come to O to play concerts. Wren is there to find out about her unknown father.
There are three sections to the book: I The Wind-up Girl, II The Book of Maps and III A Photograph of Wren Lithgow. The wind-up girl is a small mechanical doll, for which the wind-up key has been lost. It is called Ariadne. It is the only memento Wren has of her father. She takes it to a clock maker to see if he can discover anything by taking it apart and perhaps getting it to work again. She has little to go on in the hunt for her father besides the statue and an old photo with a hard to read name on the back. After a short time staying in the apartment loaned to her mother, Wren takes all the cash she can find and enters the city on her own.
The city is a major character in the book. It is a Kafkaesque Prague-like presence, with a deeply sinister side. Wren soon discovers that there are no maps. These have been outlawed by an Orwellian state that lurks in the shadows. The city has been under constant threat of invasion and to protect itself has removed every map. This turns into an obsession for Wren, who eventually begins to create her own maps, at first on paper and then on the wall of her room.
Living in a tiny hotel, at first the only sanctuary for Wren is the library, although she doesn’t speak the language. There she meets the mysterious character of Alexis and the two become lovers. She has made her own map of the route to the hotel and the library, but Alexis burns this, saying it is forbidden, against the law. If she is found with a map she could be detained and deported. The brooding presence of control is manifested in the nightly curfew. Alexis is a photographer, and we gradually discover he is employed by the state to take photographs of people of interest.
Winter comes, the rivers freeze and heating doesn’t always work. Wren leaves Alexis, suspicious of his motivations. She changes her clothes, shaves her hair and moves to a strange old room in an obscure district.
Then suddenly in part three there is a wonderful shift. Wren is looking at a noticeboard for a place to live.
When she had moved away from the board, I approached and removed the card.
Up to this point we have always been in the third person, an all-seeing narrator. This sudden switch to first person is unexpected, shocking and sinister. It is also almost subtle enough to miss there on page 124. Out of nowhere!
The start of Chapter 17 is beautifully done:
Tides rise and fall and the waterways, for the most part, do their job. Once more, the houseboats do not crack under the weight of ice and although the winter storms damage the sea walls, they remain standing for another year and we silently thank those giants of ages past who created such solid, immovable things. Ice gives way to rain and the streets become indistinguishable from the rivers. Small, bright flowers start to show themselves again, on the ground between the tram tracks. The trams themselves gleam.
Wren, out of the reach of her mother and Alexis, reminds me of myself as a child, running the gauntlet of stevedores at the docks with a gang to reach the breakwater and hurling ourselves off naked into the freezing grey sea, only to haul ourselves out and jump back in again. She is reckless. She is unaware of the danger in which she is putting herself. Either that or she does not care at all who sees what she is doing. We are practiced at turning a blind eye, though I cannot control what others see, what others notice, and I worry for her.
Suddenly this new narrator is everywhere and not being cautious about revealing little things about himself. Wren continues to search for her father.
By March she starts to reach the outer eastern edges of O where the city fades into farmland and then scrub or thick forest. If we had maps in O this site would not appear on them. If she feels uneasy here, it is because the scrubland over which she now walks is the site of a massacre of two hundred and fifty-seven, mainly men and boys, on 23 April 1988. There is no record of this event other than in the memories of the way a certain uncle used to fill the room with plumes of rose tobacco, or the way a mother threaded her fingers through her son’s hair. The bodies of those interred here, some as little as three feet below Wren’s shoes, are barely decomposed.
Wren looks out of the large window of her room, observing other windows and within them washing lines and dirty cups.
In the road, among the cars that are used and those that are abandoned, there is one that was not there yesterday. It is brown and boxy and one of the door panels has been replaced with another that is not quite the same shade of brown and there is plastic sheeting in place of the triangular window in the passenger-side door that has gathered a pool of water where it is not stretched tight. Its roof is coated in bird shit. This is the closest she has come to seeing me. I resolve to take more care.
Menmuir does a wonderful job of bringing the threats closer and closer. Then a photograph of Wren appears on a poster with the slogan SHE SEES YOU, the new daughter of O. Symbol of revolution perhaps? Capturing something that is, as yet, only in the air.
I have already given too much away, but I won’t spoil the ending or the details. All I will say is how good a read this is, and how much it creates and beautifully captures an atmosphere, a tension within the city of O. I need to read this again, as I am sure there is so much I missed the first time.
July 16, 2021
The river runs dark beneath the ice and the ice increases its hold on the houseboats, on the tips of willow branches that overhang the bank, on foundations of houses and undercut factories. It squeezes the city like eels shifting in their sleep.
A wonderfully atmospheric, enigmatic and mysterious novel. It has echoes of Invisible Cities and The Unconsoled, although the author has said he has read neither and, in any case, Fox Fires is very much a unique work in its own right, and one more intimate that those other two, great, novels.
My review is much shorter than normal, but not because of any failing of the novel, rather a book I think the reader is best to experience for themselves. I will highlight just one feature, which manifests in the first 10 pages, where the seemingly impersonal close-perspective third person narrator very occasionally drops in a first-person observation of their own, making it clear they are also a participant in the story.
Gumble Yard's excellent review also says all that I could and more: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Recommended and one I hope to see on the Booker Prize list as well as a contender for my two favourite prizes, the Goldsmiths and Republic of Consciousness.
A wonderfully atmospheric, enigmatic and mysterious novel. It has echoes of Invisible Cities and The Unconsoled, although the author has said he has read neither and, in any case, Fox Fires is very much a unique work in its own right, and one more intimate that those other two, great, novels.
My review is much shorter than normal, but not because of any failing of the novel, rather a book I think the reader is best to experience for themselves. I will highlight just one feature, which manifests in the first 10 pages, where the seemingly impersonal close-perspective third person narrator very occasionally drops in a first-person observation of their own, making it clear they are also a participant in the story.
Gumble Yard's excellent review also says all that I could and more: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Recommended and one I hope to see on the Booker Prize list as well as a contender for my two favourite prizes, the Goldsmiths and Republic of Consciousness.
July 13, 2021
Wren Lithgow has not really had a conventional upbringing. Her mother, Cleo, is a concert pianist who travels to different cities around Europe and she accompanies her as she moves. This time they are heading to the city-state of O, a place that according to her mother she was conceived in almost twenty years ago. Wren’s only information about this man is a scrap of a photo with his face on.
Finding him whilst they are staying there is her top priority and soon after arriving at their new abode, Wren has decided to leave her mother and venture into the city alone. She takes a few possessions, including the wind-up toy she calls Ariadne, a gift that arrived in her life a while ago and raised more questions than it answered.
She has no idea where to go though and stops at a café for a cake and a coke. Wren is soon on the move again trying to find her way around a city that she knows almost nothing about. A man who might be who her father walks past and she follows before realising that it almost certainly isn’t him. The next thing she knows is that she is lost. She is stopped by a woman in the street who tries to tell her that the curfew is starting soon, and points her in the direction of a hotel.
The following morning she tries to work out where she is in the city and heads out to buy a map. Nowhere has one for sale and she cannot work out why. She ends up in the library. It is mostly full of older people, but near her is a young guy sitting at a desk with his head on it sleeping. She feels the need to talk to him before he hurries off. A few days later he is there again and she manages to talk to him a little more and as it is nearly curfew, they head back to his apartment.
It is not long before she is moving into his apartment and hoping that Alexis will be able to help find her father; but will this mysterious city want to relinquish its secrets?
The city felt a little like Beszel from The City & the City by China Miéville, it feels like a place that you may have visited at some point when travelling. Menmuir has then cleverly layered that familiarity with the unease of being in a place as an outsider, where different conventions are normal and where everyone is watching.
I loved this haunting beautiful story of a girl trying to find her past in this dystopian city of O. Menmuir’s writing has found that perfect balance of tenderness about Wren, whilst conveying the brutal heavy-handedness of an authoritarian state.
Finding him whilst they are staying there is her top priority and soon after arriving at their new abode, Wren has decided to leave her mother and venture into the city alone. She takes a few possessions, including the wind-up toy she calls Ariadne, a gift that arrived in her life a while ago and raised more questions than it answered.
She has no idea where to go though and stops at a café for a cake and a coke. Wren is soon on the move again trying to find her way around a city that she knows almost nothing about. A man who might be who her father walks past and she follows before realising that it almost certainly isn’t him. The next thing she knows is that she is lost. She is stopped by a woman in the street who tries to tell her that the curfew is starting soon, and points her in the direction of a hotel.
The following morning she tries to work out where she is in the city and heads out to buy a map. Nowhere has one for sale and she cannot work out why. She ends up in the library. It is mostly full of older people, but near her is a young guy sitting at a desk with his head on it sleeping. She feels the need to talk to him before he hurries off. A few days later he is there again and she manages to talk to him a little more and as it is nearly curfew, they head back to his apartment.
It is not long before she is moving into his apartment and hoping that Alexis will be able to help find her father; but will this mysterious city want to relinquish its secrets?
The city felt a little like Beszel from The City & the City by China Miéville, it feels like a place that you may have visited at some point when travelling. Menmuir has then cleverly layered that familiarity with the unease of being in a place as an outsider, where different conventions are normal and where everyone is watching.
I loved this haunting beautiful story of a girl trying to find her past in this dystopian city of O. Menmuir’s writing has found that perfect balance of tenderness about Wren, whilst conveying the brutal heavy-handedness of an authoritarian state.
June 9, 2023
A well written and haunting novel in which the city is as much of a character as anyone else. The book opens in what is ostensibly a third-person narrative, but at points "we"s and "our"s slip in—and, in the last section of the novel, alarmingly, an "I." It becomes clear that Wren, the character around which this story spins, has been watched from the get-go.
Beyond the surveillance state, the city of O, our setting, has a further complication: Maps are forbidden. Menmuir has a background in water, and at numerous points he writes about how the city coils around the eel-like river that runs through the city. O curves, doubles back over itself, its walkways are serpentine. Wren is a foreigner in this land, but she is also of it. She struggles to orient herself in this city without maps while attempting to fulfill her purpose in coming, finding her father. She comes to find that she means more to this place, to its people, than she initially realized.
I was particularly impressed by the final section of the novel. There's a chapter in which the singular voice seamlessly and powerfully shifts to the collective, and increasingly surreal events begin to occur around Wren as she falls further and further in to O. The writing is elegant without being too showy and is successful and building the city and its mythologies, which Wren becomes increasingly entangled in. This was a very enjoyable read, and I imagine I'll be reading Menmuir's other fiction soon.
Beyond the surveillance state, the city of O, our setting, has a further complication: Maps are forbidden. Menmuir has a background in water, and at numerous points he writes about how the city coils around the eel-like river that runs through the city. O curves, doubles back over itself, its walkways are serpentine. Wren is a foreigner in this land, but she is also of it. She struggles to orient herself in this city without maps while attempting to fulfill her purpose in coming, finding her father. She comes to find that she means more to this place, to its people, than she initially realized.
I was particularly impressed by the final section of the novel. There's a chapter in which the singular voice seamlessly and powerfully shifts to the collective, and increasingly surreal events begin to occur around Wren as she falls further and further in to O. The writing is elegant without being too showy and is successful and building the city and its mythologies, which Wren becomes increasingly entangled in. This was a very enjoyable read, and I imagine I'll be reading Menmuir's other fiction soon.
April 7, 2022
Completely mesmerising
A coming of age story about a young woman, Wren Lithgow, returning to the City of O to find the father she's never met. At first she is the one looking, but the narrative shifts and we question who is being observed and why. Surveillance in a city without a map drives the plot in this completely mesmerising novel.
A coming of age story about a young woman, Wren Lithgow, returning to the City of O to find the father she's never met. At first she is the one looking, but the narrative shifts and we question who is being observed and why. Surveillance in a city without a map drives the plot in this completely mesmerising novel.
January 12, 2026
I have forgotten where and when I first heard about this book, but I'm very glad I decided to pick it up. It's explorations of independence and discovery remind me of the books I loved as a child, while also integrating more mature relationships and understandings of war, surveillance, and isolation. O, the fictional city-state where the story unfolds, is tangible while also remaining mysterious. It is poetic and full of subtle surprises and twists, which make it rewarding even though the ending leaves many things open. It was a pretty short read, but I can also say that I would've read a much longer novel about this character and the world of O.
May 20, 2021
I found this a very compelling book - a sure sign I'm really into something is if I wake up early and bash through it some more before breakfast, which I did a few times with this one.
It's the story of a girl searching for her father in the beautifully drawn fictional city of O, which is by turns uplifting, sinister, tender, harrowing, sad and hopeful. It's literary whilst still having a really driving plot at its core, which can sometimes be an issue for me (it reminded in a little of The Unconsoled, which I recently abandoned out of frustration at it going nowhere - I've said to a few people that I got the experience I had wanted from The Unconsoled from Fox Fires). It also brought to mind the intricate/absurd state machinery of Kafka and often films, such as The Lives of Others, The Conversation, and at points even Don't Look Now and The Wicker Man.
I loved it.
It's the story of a girl searching for her father in the beautifully drawn fictional city of O, which is by turns uplifting, sinister, tender, harrowing, sad and hopeful. It's literary whilst still having a really driving plot at its core, which can sometimes be an issue for me (it reminded in a little of The Unconsoled, which I recently abandoned out of frustration at it going nowhere - I've said to a few people that I got the experience I had wanted from The Unconsoled from Fox Fires). It also brought to mind the intricate/absurd state machinery of Kafka and often films, such as The Lives of Others, The Conversation, and at points even Don't Look Now and The Wicker Man.
I loved it.
May 26, 2021
I loved this book. Unsettling and beautiful.
July 11, 2024
I bought this book when it popped up in my goodreads recs a few years ago and I can see why the algorithm would think I would like it. The prose has that liminal spaces feeling that normally adore.
However, this book fell flat for me. I quite literally fell asleep reading somewhere around page 88. I normally would have stopped there but I was already more than half way through the novel so I kept pressing on.
If I were to describe this book I would call it a cross between the Gormenghast novels and 1984. The city of O and the way it is described gives the feeling an eastern European nation at the end of the Cold War.
The author tries to make O a character in and of itself but it falls flat for me. It's been years since I've ready Mervyn Peake, but I still remember how I felt about castle Gormenghast and its inhabitants. In contrast I dont feel much of anything about O and I certainly didnt care about any of the people in this book.
My issue is that our protagonist, Wren Lithgow, is a bit of a dipshit- even if you take her young age and upbringing into consideration. I may not like her overbearing and controlling mother but I found myself thinking that if my child was this stupid I wouldn't let her leave the house either. It was incredibly unpleasant spending time with her and I found myself wishing a 747 would crash into her so I could tour O with someone more interesting. To be fair she isn't really a character in and of herself, she is a vehicle for the audience.
About 160 pages in the novel approaches something like a point. And I have to admit if it had been developed a bit more I would have been vastly more engaged and interested in this book. Instead this novel focuses on Wren and her identity crisis and sense of displacement.
So this novel is probably a better fit for someone who can stomach spending so much time with it's protagonist.
However, this book fell flat for me. I quite literally fell asleep reading somewhere around page 88. I normally would have stopped there but I was already more than half way through the novel so I kept pressing on.
If I were to describe this book I would call it a cross between the Gormenghast novels and 1984. The city of O and the way it is described gives the feeling an eastern European nation at the end of the Cold War.
The author tries to make O a character in and of itself but it falls flat for me. It's been years since I've ready Mervyn Peake, but I still remember how I felt about castle Gormenghast and its inhabitants. In contrast I dont feel much of anything about O and I certainly didnt care about any of the people in this book.
My issue is that our protagonist, Wren Lithgow, is a bit of a dipshit- even if you take her young age and upbringing into consideration. I may not like her overbearing and controlling mother but I found myself thinking that if my child was this stupid I wouldn't let her leave the house either. It was incredibly unpleasant spending time with her and I found myself wishing a 747 would crash into her so I could tour O with someone more interesting. To be fair she isn't really a character in and of herself, she is a vehicle for the audience.
About 160 pages in the novel approaches something like a point. And I have to admit if it had been developed a bit more I would have been vastly more engaged and interested in this book. Instead this novel focuses on Wren and her identity crisis and sense of displacement.
So this novel is probably a better fit for someone who can stomach spending so much time with it's protagonist.
August 30, 2023
Nineteen-year-old Wren arrives with her mother in the city-state of O, a place she’s longed to visit for years. Her mother, a renowned concert pianist, is here to give a performance. Wren is here because she’s followed her narcissistic mother from city to city for her entire life, but she also wants to find her father, a man she’s never met.
When her mother leaves their sumptuous apartment to go to a rehearsal, Wren packs her passport and a mechanical doll she’s told belonged to her father and begins her search. It’s tricky as she has little to go on, can’t (yet) speak the language and the city is a labyrinth with no available map.
This short novel, published by Salt, was the perfect read for someone like me who enjoys the quirky but hasn’t the patience for the overly obscure. The gentle pared-back style draws the reader in, creating a sense of literary safety, even if you don’t completely understand what’s going on.
The city itself is unsettling, with half the inhabitants spying on the others and vague references to barely acknowledged atrocities during the recent civil war. Meanwhile, Wren is on a quest to find not only her father but to find herself, free from her mother’s shadow. But, as she is watching the citizens, she too is being watched.
I’d like to fathom its deeper meaning but, right now, I’m simply happy that I enjoyed it. I’d sum it up as a coming-of-age story about secrets and entrapment and finding your own way out.
When her mother leaves their sumptuous apartment to go to a rehearsal, Wren packs her passport and a mechanical doll she’s told belonged to her father and begins her search. It’s tricky as she has little to go on, can’t (yet) speak the language and the city is a labyrinth with no available map.
This short novel, published by Salt, was the perfect read for someone like me who enjoys the quirky but hasn’t the patience for the overly obscure. The gentle pared-back style draws the reader in, creating a sense of literary safety, even if you don’t completely understand what’s going on.
The city itself is unsettling, with half the inhabitants spying on the others and vague references to barely acknowledged atrocities during the recent civil war. Meanwhile, Wren is on a quest to find not only her father but to find herself, free from her mother’s shadow. But, as she is watching the citizens, she too is being watched.
I’d like to fathom its deeper meaning but, right now, I’m simply happy that I enjoyed it. I’d sum it up as a coming-of-age story about secrets and entrapment and finding your own way out.
June 18, 2023
Fox Fires is the story of Wren Lithgow. To date her life has been spent moving from city to city, travelling across Europe with her difficult and demanding concert pianist mother, always leaving just before their money and their welcome runs out.
At the beginning of the novel the pair have arrived in the city-state of O. Only recently reopened to the world following a vicious civil war, O is the place where Wren was conceived. And so she determines to strike out on her own, heading off on a quest to find her father. She doesn't even have a name to go on, just a single photograph and a small broken mechanical doll.
Her mother tells her that O is a dangerous place, but with the hubris of youth, Wren ignores her warnings. She starts to explore this strange labyrinthine city, where maps are banned and street signs nonexistent. These measures are to deter invaders, but as recent history shows, O's danger comes from within. Sure enough, soon Wren realises she has attracted the wrong sort of attention and is being watched.
Wyl Menmuir excels in writing stories that evoke a creeping sense of tension. The cityscape is claustrophobic, everything and everyone seems to be under surveillance, there is a strict curfew and no-one can be trusted. Wren has a paranoid compulsion to try and map it, believing that once she has pinned it down, she will understand this mysterious place she seems to belong to.
It's unsettling and atmospheric, haunting and intriguing, a multi-layered concoction about belonging and identity. Wren and the city-state of O got under my skin and into my head and will stay there for quite a while.
At the beginning of the novel the pair have arrived in the city-state of O. Only recently reopened to the world following a vicious civil war, O is the place where Wren was conceived. And so she determines to strike out on her own, heading off on a quest to find her father. She doesn't even have a name to go on, just a single photograph and a small broken mechanical doll.
Her mother tells her that O is a dangerous place, but with the hubris of youth, Wren ignores her warnings. She starts to explore this strange labyrinthine city, where maps are banned and street signs nonexistent. These measures are to deter invaders, but as recent history shows, O's danger comes from within. Sure enough, soon Wren realises she has attracted the wrong sort of attention and is being watched.
Wyl Menmuir excels in writing stories that evoke a creeping sense of tension. The cityscape is claustrophobic, everything and everyone seems to be under surveillance, there is a strict curfew and no-one can be trusted. Wren has a paranoid compulsion to try and map it, believing that once she has pinned it down, she will understand this mysterious place she seems to belong to.
It's unsettling and atmospheric, haunting and intriguing, a multi-layered concoction about belonging and identity. Wren and the city-state of O got under my skin and into my head and will stay there for quite a while.
February 4, 2024
This could have been a 5 star read but??????? WHERE DID THE END GO???? ARE THERE LOST PAGES????
Conceptually this is a spiritual successor to 1984, and it's quite an intriguing one. The land of O is a real place in our world, a country that's isolated and impenetrable, and Wren is a daughter of one of its residents that has never stepped foot in the country for as long as she lived, nor has she ever met that parent. So when she reaches the city obviously her main wish is to find him, which is very hard considering that there are no maps of this country, and making maps is illegal. So for the entire book we follow Wren as she tries to figure out the mystery of her father, map out the city, and understand her past and the reason she seems to look like all of the statues of the Daughter of O, whilst also getting followed by spies that track her every movement. And whilst this sounds great in theory, it feels like the last 1/4 of this book is missing!!! Who was the pianist??? What happened to Alexis?? The police?? The parade?? WREN???? It feels as if the author just kind of got bored at the end and decided to just give up while she was ahead. Truly a shame.
Conceptually this is a spiritual successor to 1984, and it's quite an intriguing one. The land of O is a real place in our world, a country that's isolated and impenetrable, and Wren is a daughter of one of its residents that has never stepped foot in the country for as long as she lived, nor has she ever met that parent. So when she reaches the city obviously her main wish is to find him, which is very hard considering that there are no maps of this country, and making maps is illegal. So for the entire book we follow Wren as she tries to figure out the mystery of her father, map out the city, and understand her past and the reason she seems to look like all of the statues of the Daughter of O, whilst also getting followed by spies that track her every movement. And whilst this sounds great in theory, it feels like the last 1/4 of this book is missing!!! Who was the pianist??? What happened to Alexis?? The police?? The parade?? WREN???? It feels as if the author just kind of got bored at the end and decided to just give up while she was ahead. Truly a shame.
June 17, 2021
A story about an individual's struggle for self-discovery whilst battling an oppressive, anonymous power. I was captivated by the story of Wren, and her journey through the elusive streets of O - a fictional city, licking its post-war wounds and, like Wren, trying to regain a lost confidence of its sense of self.
Meticulously researched, Menmuir weaves threads from Greek myth (Ariadne), the claustrophobic power of the machine (Kafka, The Castle), the magic and secrets of the city (Calvino, Invisible Cities; Zafon, The Cemetery of Forgotten Books) and contemporary philosophy (The Metropolis and Mental Life).
On finishing the book, I immediately returned to the first page, unable to escape, like Wren.
Meticulously researched, Menmuir weaves threads from Greek myth (Ariadne), the claustrophobic power of the machine (Kafka, The Castle), the magic and secrets of the city (Calvino, Invisible Cities; Zafon, The Cemetery of Forgotten Books) and contemporary philosophy (The Metropolis and Mental Life).
On finishing the book, I immediately returned to the first page, unable to escape, like Wren.
October 4, 2021
Fox Fires is a beautifully crafted, multilayered gem. Deeply atmospheric, almost hypnotic in its intensity, on one level it is the story of Wren Lithgow’s quest to find her father in the fictitious city-state of O. But there is much more to it than this: as the tale unfolds it becomes clear that Wren is searching as much for her own identity as that of her father, while on another level it concerns the city’s quest for its own identity, its people’s sense of who they really are. With much to say along the way about the morality of state surveillance and the uneasy balance between intelligence and individual freedom, this is a book to ponder, and to return to multiple times. Bravo!
July 23, 2021
Brilliant on a conceptual level, flawed on a narrative one. Finely nuanced characterisation, atmospheric to the nines, but with a tendency to aphoristic dialogue that is stilted rather than organic or naturalistic. Tension builds effectively in the last third with two revelations - one shattering, one sublime - coming in quick succession, only for neither to be revisited or developed in a final chapter that flirts with being an Iain Banks style set-piece but then just peters out.
May 11, 2021
I read this novel a few weeks ago, and keep thinking about it... It's incredibly beautifully written, and has a wonderful dreamlike quality. The city has blurred into a gorgeous amalgam of lots of cities I remember, and I feel as if I've wandered there too with no map. In this time of no travel, grab yourself a copy and escape on a journey of the imagination with Fox Fires!
July 13, 2021
I absolutely devoured this wonderful book. I have been looking for so long for something gripping and that would take me to another world. Fox Fires did that. Every time I delved in, it transported me. It made me feel free. The story carried me along, through the streets of O, and the threads of the young protagonist's mind. It was wonderful.
March 27, 2022
I'm not sure how to begin this review, I might have to think about it a bit longer. It's surreal and haunting, mysterious, unsettling, slowly nudging the reader towards the end. A beautiful, satisfying novel, leaving me with emotions I'm not sure I can fully articulate. I feel as though I was reading through a veil, which I hope makes sense.
July 21, 2021
This is a little gem of a book. An excellent summer read with all of my favourite things: complex characters, wonderful descriptive detail, magical realism and a touch of dystopia. Highly recommend adding this to your summer reading list.
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