Book Review of "Things We Set on Fire" By Deborah Reed

Book Overview (amazon.com)

A series of tragedies brings Vivvie's young grandchildren into her custody, and her two estranged daughters back under one roof. Jackson, Vivvie’s husband, was shot and killed thirty years ago, and the ramifications have splintered the family into their own isolated remembrances and recriminations.

Sisters Elin and Kate fought mercilessly in childhood and have avoided each other for years. Elin seems like the last person to watch her sister convalesce after an attempted suicide. But Elin has her own reasons for coming to Kate's side and will soon discover Kate’s own staggering needs.

This deeply personal, hauntingly melancholy look at the damages families inflict on each other—and the healing that only they can provide—is filled with flinty, flawed, and complex people stumbling toward some kind of peace. Like Elizabeth Strout and Kazuo Ishiguro, Deborah Reed understands a story, and its inhabitants reveal themselves in the subtleties: the space between the thoughts, the sigh behind the smile, and the unreliable lies people tell themselves that ultimately reveal the deepest truths.

Author Introduction

Deborah Reed is the author of the novel, Carry Yourself Back to Me, a Best Book of 2011 Amazon Editors' Pick. She is also the author of the bestselling thriller, A Small Fortune and its sequel, Fortune's Deadly Descent, written under the pen name, Audrey Braun. All three novels have been translated or are forthcoming in German. Her next literary novel, Things We Set On Fire will be published in fall 2013. Deborah holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing (fiction) and teaches at UCLA's Extension Writing Program, as well as workshops and conferences around the United States and in Europe. She lives in Los Angeles, California. Find out more at her website: www.reed-braun.com

Book Review of "The Goldfinch" By Donna Tartt

Book Synopsis (amazon.com)

It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art. 

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. 

Honest Impressions

I really liked this book. It kind of reminded me of some books I had read in high school. I kept going back in my mind to some of the characters I had read back then like Willie Loman (Death of a Salesman) and Holden Claufield (Catcher in the Rye). That's kind of the feel of this book. It is a bildungsroman, but it's a little more than just that. It is as if Donna Tartt has combined the fiction of Charles Dickens with the writing of J.D. Salinger.

(By the way Dickens was a big influence on Tartt)

Anyway, the book kept up a good pace throughout. The characters were interesting. I think though, that the most important "character" was the painting itself. It sounds strange to say that a painting could be a character, but it really was.