A tale of destruction but also cleansing
Tense and evocative escape from more than just the raging wildfires, writes Sue Green.
The New England Historical Society describes 1947 as ‘‘the year a state burned’’. Wildfires swept through the heavily forested US state of Maine, as illprepared residents fled and poorly trained men and boys battled an inferno that would kill 16 people and destroy 851 homes.
Grace Holland, 23 years old and five months pregnant, is alone with her two children as the fires near their Hunts Beach home; husband Gene is with the firefighters.
Awakened by her daughter’s screams as ‘‘a wall of fire fills the window’’, she runs, terrified, with her children and her neighbours to the water’s edge, lying in air pockets under wet blankets. ‘‘People who have not managed to get out of town are trapped like rats running for the sea… The heat on their heads and backs is just this side of bearable. The blanket won’t stay wet for long.’’
Shreve’s depiction of the fire is tense and evocative, yet we know that Grace won’t die. In the first 50 pages of The Stars Are Fire, shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize, Shreve lays the groundwork for this escape – not only from the fires, but from a loveless marriage, the hostile mother-in-law, the marital rape.
As her previous 17 books have ably demonstrated, Shreve, whose big break came in 1998 when The Pilot’s Wife was recommended by Oprah Winfrey, knows how to tell a story.
Here she does so with her usual deft touch: the building drought, the heat, the dust, the fraying tempers and then the outbreak of inland fires the backdrop to Grace’s stultifying daily life.
Fire has long been a symbol of destruction but also cleansing; the phoenix rises from the ashes, transformation and new life emerge from devastation.
So it is for Grace and her children. Gene, presumed dead, does not return. Despite the enormous challenges of beginning again with nothing but the clothes she and her children wear, Grace samples freedom for the first time. She likes its taste.
But will it last? Inevitably not or it wouldn’t be much of a story. That inevitability creates its own tension, even though there is some predictability and events are telegraphed. This is an unchallenging, albeit engrossing read. But Shreve does it well.
Grace is an empathetic and rounded character – really the only one. Others, such as her husband, her mother, neighbour Rosie, the local doctor, are satellites, orbiting around Grace.
It is Shreve’s success in creating this fictional yet very real woman, thwarted by the constraints of post-war American society, and in constantly pushing her story forward, at times in unexpected ways, which ensures The Stars Are Fire‘s success.