Night of Fire

October 24, 2016
A Victorian house somewhere near the sea, ruined over time, is burning down. Chapter by chapter, room by smoky room, Thubron’s remarkable novel journeys into the lives of the house’s six occupants, mining their pasts and the places they’ve traveled for answers to questions that have plagued mankind since Socrates. What is memory? Does it constitute one’s very self, or conquer death as something inherited, like a story? Looking through his telescope for wisdom, the landlord muses on the vastness of the stars. The priest, who no longer believes, relives a tragedy resulting from faith’s melancholy absence. The neurosurgeon, a coldhearted rationalist, is confronted by a patient who pleads with him not to erase her memories of a dead lover when extracting a tumor from her brain. The young naturalist, in love with butterflies, finds the infinite under a microscope. And the photographer searches for life’s essence in the portraits he takes. By the time we arrive at the luminous chapter devoted to the traveler, it is clear these restless tenants have more in common than we first imagined. All of them recognize, as the traveler does, that “an obscure rankling never quite died—as if there had, after all, been a destination that had eluded him.”

Starred review from November 1, 2016
Flashbacks provide a glimpse of the lives of seven seemingly disconnected people who occupy an old British building in this engrossing novel by the celebrated travel writer.Faulty wiring sparks a fire one night in the basement of the building, and as it moves from flat to flat, Thubron (To a Mountain in Tibet, 2011, etc.) visits each tenant in six long chapters, all bracketed by two short ones on the landlord. "Priest" features a cleric named Stephen as a photograph sends his memory back 50 years through a variety of religious experiences, from the seminary to the asceticism of a Mount Athos monastery and missionary work in Tanzania. Memory is both physical and personal in the "Neurosurgeon" section, which alternates between the doctor on a hike deciding whether to propose to his companion and contemplating operations where patients may lose more than excised tissue. In the "Naturalist" section, the title character is Stephanie, the frequent subject is butterflies--sometimes thought to be "spirits of the departed"--and the book's high point of sensuality is her making love with a woman named Samantha. The "Photographer" is Steve, who tries to reach his dead mother through a seance. The "Schoolboy" lies to gain sympathy by saying his parents are dead. And then comes the "Traveller," named Steven, who has been roaming for 50 years. He has recently had brain surgery. He visits a Tibetan monastery in Varanasi, where the dead are burned in public. The book by this point is bursting not just with variations of Stephen, but with nearby death, which all the building's dwellers may be facing on the night of fire they unavoidably share, as the traveler unites them in mirroring many details of their stories--a pilgrim not unlike the author, who is 77 and can look back at 50 years of travel and fiction writing. Thubron isn't subtle in his themes or structure, but he intrigues with his many resonances and takes the reader on a journey through life's essential questions.

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Starred review from November 15, 2016
A burning building and the final thoughts of its seven occupants prompt a vivid and wistful meditation on the mysteries of diverse lands, personality, and memory. A priest, haunted by a colleague's suicide, seeks solace in Africa. A naturalist discovers her own wings while studying butterflies in Normandy. A traveler, hollowed out by his mother's death, visits the Ganges. A neurosurgeon traverses his patients' scarred brains. Certain images recur throughout the novel, as do uncanny parallels in the characters' names, family relationships, and lingering questions about the fragility of the coherent self. And as the book progresses, it becomes clear that Thubron's intent is not just a cycle of stories linked by tragic fate but something messier and more profound. If one's life is a burning house, as declared by a Tibetan monk near the book's end, presumably to nail down the allegory, is it possible that one life can contain multiple histories, each presenting its own truth? As a master travel writer, Thubron (To a Mountain in Tibet, 2011) is remarkable for his supple, nuanced prose and concentration on individual personalities as well as place. This evocative and philosophical novel reminds us that such qualities make for powerful fiction as well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)