The Book of Fire

Our Review

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful village, which held a million stories of love and loss and peace and war, and it was swallowed by a fire that blazed up to the sky. The fire ran all the way down to the sea, where it met with its reflection."

The Book of Fire was a poignant read, all the more so in light of the recent wildfires in Rhodes. Christy Lefteri has such a beautiful way of writing, even when describing the desolation of the forest after the fire. 

Irini lives in a bungalow in an idyllic village in Greece. A beautiful home near an ancient forest. She lives with her artist husband and her beloved daughter Chara. Irini sees herself as a good person until a fire destroys her home and the surrounding forest. 

After the fire Irini's home is destroyed and her husband and daughter are left with both physical and emotional scars from the fire. Her much loved father-in-law has been lost without a trace since the day of the fire. As well as all these losses Irini is grieving the secondary losses of parts of her family heritage, the changed personalities of her loved ones and not least the loss of the creatures who lived within the forest. Irini is angry and it is that anger that surfaces when she sees Mr Monk in the forest in need of help. 

"This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so did I. I left him. 

I left him, and now he may be dead." 

The book is told both in the present and in flashbacks, a device some readers have expressed displeasure at, but I felt it worked really well. It made the whole thing seem more real, as if Irini could only stand to relive the trauma of the fire if she relayed it in third person. 

"Maybe I can write it down. Maybe, that way, I can allow myself to remember without burning. Remember it as if it is a story from long, long ago. A fairy tale with a happy ending, like one of those in the beautifully illustrated books on the shelf in Maria's kafenion. I will call it The Book of Fire."

I read The Book of Fire in just a few hours and it has cemented Christy Lefteri's place among my favourite authors. I loved the way I began by questioning Christy's moral fibre, but then before long I was questioning whether I would have done the same if I was looking into his eyes in the heat of the moment.

"Within them, I saw Lazaros. I saw Lazaros standing in the old forest. I saw the pine trees and fir trees and poplars and plane trees and oaks. I saw the weasels, and minks, the wildcats and the badgers. I saw the beautiful red deer that roamed the lowlands. I saw the birds and the rabbits and the hedgehogs and moles and rats, the lizards and the beetles, the tiny insects, the ladybirdsand butterflies. I saw the wildflowers. I saw the colours of the forest as it was...I saw then the fifteen people huddled together, the ones we had seen as we ran down to the sea from our home - they had died holding onto each other. 

I saw my husband's face and my daughter's." 

The Book of Fire is a piece of fiction but it is also a dire warning about the consequences of the damage we are inflicting on our planet.

"The forest fires have always been worse during a drought, and as the years pass, the droughts have become longer and more frequent, the land drying out most summers, and the winds becoming stronger, too, the humidity lower. The conditions have progressively worsened."

This book will haunt me for some time to come.

"While you live, shine. Have no grief at all. 

Life exists only for a short while. 

And time demands its toll." 

 

Our Final Rating...

8 Months Ago