Burning Out

by Katherine May

Violet has a good job, a luxury apartment, a success life. But she feels drained and pressurized and, on the verge of snapping, retreats to her home town. There, she meets a girl: carefree, sassy, vivacious and everything Violet wishes she was. Slowly, though, comes the realization that this girl is living Violet's own past. Haunted by her past self, Violet knows that history will repeat itself - and knows that it will have catastrophic consequences.

Genres: Fiction

350 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2009

About the author

Katherine May is an internationally bestselling author and podcaster living in Whitstable, UK. Her hybrid memoir Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times became a New York Times, Sunday Times and Der Spiegel bestseller, was adapted as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, and was shortlisted for the Porchlight and Barnes and Noble Book of the Year. The Electricity of Every Living Thing, her memoir of a midlife autism diagnosis, is currently being adapted as an audio drama by Audible. Other titles include novels such as The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club, and The Best, Most Awful Job, an anthology of essays about motherhood which she edited. Her journalism and essays have appeared in a range of publications including The New York Times, The Observer and Aeon.

Katherine’s podcast, The Wintering Sessions, ranks in the top 1% worldwide, and she has been a guest presenter for On Being’s The Future of Hope series. Her next book, Enchantment, will be published in 2023.

Katherine lives with her husband, son, two cats and a dog. She loves walking, sea-swimming and pickling slightly unappealing things.

Reviews

[alice wanderlust · Rating 4 out of 5]

A curious read

I enjoyed this book but the ending was left so open, felt it needed a little more closure so the beginning and end joined up more. It needed that link,
I wouldn’t say it was gripping but left me curious to read on, and an easy read, the author describes emotions and thoughts and lives in such detail and so accurately you can picture them and feel them. I think it’s worth a read, and this author writes beautifully in other books of hers that I’ve read.

[Jeanette Sylvester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confusing. I found the book engrossing and the characters convincing, but finished it still confused with the concept and still unsure of the relationships.

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really excited to have won another first-reads book. I was surprised by Burning Out, by Katheine May, because it wasn't the type of book I'd normally gravitate towards - but I really liked it.

Burning Out is the type of book where there is a lot of room open to the interpretation of the reader. The underlying messages are powerful... I think one of my favorite parts was something like 'the more information we download and search out, the more stupid we get'. We work so hard to make our lives easy, earn more money, gain a perceived prestige - and in that journey - we forget how to live.

At first, the two different voices (with one in first person, and one in third) was very interesting to me (I love books written this way). It made it seem like a narrative with a little bit of sarcasm thrown in. But when the voices started coming together, I realized they were the same person - one in the present and one voicing from the past - when the world was still wide open and full of opportunities before mistakes could be made.

I think Violet went a little nuts. She'd do what she should, what was expected, when she should do it - all for work. She'd take pills to improve her body, vitamins to improve her mind, and still, she never felt 'good'. The constant toll the daily "grind" had on her body, mind, and soul was too much and as soon as 'events' made her carefully planned out life jump a track or two, she fled.

She gave the former, younger, self a different name (daisy) - trying to seperate her young self from the mistakes she would inevitably make. The two perspectives were a very interesting way to read how we think and feel at different points in our lives. The older Violet, was proud and facsinated by her younger self - unable to believe she was ever that confident, defiant, and cool. The younger daisy could only look on the present (since she didn't have the knowledge of the future yet), and couldn't really like herself - she wasn't pretty enough, cool enough, and put out an air of disinterest. She'd glimpse here and there a future self, and she wasn't too proud of that either.

Violet made it her goal to help daisy, to stop THE event from happening and freeing daisy from leading the unhappy life that was in store for her. But how could she do that? Things were already done, and although memories could be changed, how she looked on things could be manipulated with her mind - what had happened could not. A little depressing at this point to realize she couldn't change the past - none of us can. She untimately argues with daisy, who accuses her of not stopping her in time, not paying attention to the warning signs, and ultimately blaming her (herself) for a tragedy that would shape her future.

Overall - a very intriguing book and one that I would recommend to anyone who wanted to think about what they had read for days after finishing, and get a perspective on the possible harm too much of a good thing can cause.

[Bethany Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first and only First-reads win. I was very excited. I'm not sure if I'll push to do more because I have the tendency to read slow and I think that cripples my chances to win more. Heh. But that's beside the point. On with the review!
I had a hard time getting threw this book at first and was unsure if I liked it when I was about 3/4 of the way through it. When I finished reading it, though, the ending was enough to round out the whole experience of this book and helped me understand the parts I was aggravated with. I felt it was slow to start out, but I LOVED when the narrator would take over and add some of her own opinions in the first part of the book, for example her rant on pages 48 through 51. I absolutely love those pages. The second part of the book made it easier to understand what I thought of as "slow and unnecessary" in the beginning and I felt it added a spark to Violet or made her "more,"if that makes sense. She was living her life free of what had been dragging her down. She was more confident and I liked her building relationship with Antonia at the Hotel Napoli. But then I had a hard time pushing though the third part of the book. The narrator gives you an important point that made me feel like there was no need to finish the book to see that saving of Violet's young "double" who she meets in the later half of the second part of the book. I also had a hard time with the change in Violet towards the end. She begins acting more and more like an angry teenager, in my opinion, and I started to not care about her anymore. Then the end came and I liked how it all rounded itself out. The points that are brought up and the completion of the story made me realize that all in all, I did like this book. I would recommend this book to my friends.

I would like to thank Katherine May for sending me a copy of this book. I look forward to reading more of her work.

[J.Elle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not one of those pick-me-up kinds. The main character, Violet, is going through a mid-life crisis of sorts (at age 29). I felt that she was sort of depressing; perhaps this was the point. I was also disappointed because the summary about the book made great mention of the fact that Violet meets a younger version of herself whom she has a strange connection with and who she feels she must save from a horrible incident. The summary made it seem as if this was the main storyline in the book and I felt like this was merely a backdrop to Violet's melt-down. However, there was a slight twist at the very end that I was not expecting. I pride myself on being able to sniff out even the most secret of plot twists, but this one got me. If you are looking for something thought-provoking, but not uplifting, this might be for you.

I just realized I needed to add that I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.