THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

“Things We Set On Fire”, reveals the stories of three women and the terrible tragedy that impacts their lives.  Vivien Fenton, a widow, raises her two daughters alone, in Florida.  The two girls, Elin and Kate, are six and five when their father, Jackson, dies.

Thirty years later, Vivien, who has little communication with either daughter, calls Elin to tell her another tragedy has struck the family.  Elin, married and living in Oregon, is struggling with a newly discovered, disturbing secret about her husband.  Wanting space from Rudi, she reluctantly agrees to her mother’s request to return to Florida.

The girls, so young when their father left them, cherish shared memories of him.  Though Vivien secrets the truth, of her husband’s death, she suspects Elin knows something.  Placed under duress by the new crisis, the women begin not only to face the past, but to account for their misdeeds.

 

The theme, of “knowing without knowing” runs throughout the novel, although the mystery is dissipated after the first page.  It is what follows and the consequence of Vivien’s decision that inflicts such damage upon her daughters.  The stories are largely told in flashbacks and in the voices of Vivien, Elin, Kate and Neal, Kate’s husband. 

The novel advances slowly as the plot winds around the characters emotional traumas, and long held anger and guilt.  Light fiction for the beach or for the plane.