Burning the Night

by Glen Huser

From small-town Alberta, Curtis comes to Edmonton to obtain a teaching degree. There he forms a close friendship with his elderly, blind Aunt Harriet, considered a family pariah due to her eccentric enthusiasm for a lost world of artists and musicians.

When Curtis begins reading aloud to Harriet the diary her intended husband Phillip kept before his death during World War One, an obsessed Curtis examines parallels to his own life: his desire to become a skillful artist and to find fulfilling love.

Timeless and essential, award-winning author Glen Huser’s Burning the Night spans across generations and distance, traversing from Vancouver to Halifax, as it bears down on the history of Canadian painting and Curtis’s awakening as a gay man.

Genres: Fiction, Gay, Canada, Literary Fiction, Queer, Historical Fiction

234 pages, Unknown Binding

About the author

Glen Huser was born in Ashmont, AB, on February 1, 1943 - he was, in fact, born in Elk Point, AB, as Ashmont did not have a hospital. A former teacher-librarian, he is the founder of Magpie, a quarterly magazine that showcases student writing and graphics.

He has served on the board of directors of both the Young Alberta Book Society and the Edmonton chapter of the Children’s Literature Roundtable, and he is the long-standing children’s book reviewer for the Edmonton Journal. Glen currently teaches library and information studies at the University of Alberta.

Reviews

[Magnus Jorgensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burning the Night is a story of the complicated personal history of a disjointed Canadian family. A young man spending time with his mysterious aunt gets obsessed with her life, through the pages of her now deceased ex-lover's diary. I really liked the idea for this novel, and the way information about some pretty shocking events is slowly revealed was effective. I'm not someone who knows a whole lot about Canadian history since I left the country for high school, so that part fun. All the discussion about music and art was also clearly well-researched and interesting. I can't help but feel like there was something missing though, maybe I just wish the pacing was a bit better. Since the diary entries were not in chronological order the whole book, it was a bit of a puzzle at first to figure out how everyone was related. I also wished the character of Walter had a more clear ending, but that's just me.

SPOILERS ***** The Halifax explosion reveal was great. I think my mouth dropped open, and I was hooked from the time that Curtis arrived in Toronto all the way until the last page.

[Susan Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I simply loved this book.

It was well-written and had me hooked pretty much from the beginning.

It's a story that combines delving into family stories and secrets, set in historical segments of Canada's past from the 20th century.

So well told - it was captivating.

[Colleen Mondor · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2* A compelling story that weaves together Canadian history & art as well as familiar Edmonton locations. By a former EPSB colleague.

[Alberta Views Magazine]

A new Glen Huser book is always welcome, whatever its subject. Huser is one of the steady, quiet lights of Alberta’s writing world—an excellent author who is often underappreciated, which I hope changes with this novel.

Burning the Night is both easy and hard to describe. Repressed gay man Curtis comes to Edmonton to attend university and befriends his eccentric aunt Harriet, an accomplished violinist blinded by an accident in her youth, and her loyal companion and housekeeper, Jean. As he reads to Harriet, particularly from the diary and sketchbook that her husband-to-be, Phillip, wrote during the First World War, Curtis becomes obsessed with the hidden stories that have been untold by Harriet and all the family since she married his uncle Hartley. From this deceptively simple weave comes Curtis’s obsession with their differences, their similarities and the strange parallels of their lives and interests. “Like Aunt Harriet,” says Curtis plainly on the first page of chapter one, “I had spent a good deal of my life in blindness,” qualifying it by adding “but a blindness of my own selection.” We are warned right at the outset that we can expect Curtis to use Harriet’s story both as a disguise and as a detection tool to understand his own repression....

Review by Candas Jane Dorsey
Full review at https://albertaviews.ca/burning-the-n...

[Michael Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a child in the 1950s, Curtis meets his blind Aunt Harriet and sees a Tom Thomson oil painting hanging on the wall. But it is the nude sketch of his aunt as a young woman hanging next to it that captures his attention. So begins his virtual obsession with the life of his aunt, her artistic lover, and the lover's intersections with the Group of Seven. The novel travels back and forth in time, as Curtis reads diary entries aloud to his aunt, pursues his interest in her personal history, and gradually comes to terms with his life as a gay man. The tone of the novel has a kind of Group-of-Seven quality too--pensive, evocative, and wide-horizoned--but the denouement drags the reader into the visceral gut-punch of a Goya. This is a lovely, thoughtful, and creative novel, well worth your time.

[Bart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book, interesting story about growing up gay in the late '50's in Alberta with many historical references to the First World War and the artistic community, notably the Group of Seven. Huser is a very good Canadian author who gives the reader an interesting view on rural and urban Alberta after the second world war. A good read.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read with just enough history, educational info, and mystery to engage my attention. I feel like I really got to know these characters. I'm always astounded by the Canadian history one would think I'd have known and been aware of much earlier than I actually was.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too slow and weird. Could not get into it.