Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

INTO THE FIRE

Sonia Orchard

A year after her best friend died in a house fire, Lara can't come to terms with the loss. Logic says there was no more she could have done to save the mercurial and unhappy Alice, but Lara can't escape the feeling that she is somehow to blame for the tragedy.

She spends a weekend at the rebuilt house with Alice's charismatic widower, Crow, and his three young children. Rummaging through the remains of their shared past, Lara reveals a friendship with Alice that was as troubled as it was intense. But beneath the surface is a darker, more unsettling secret waiting to be exposed.

Through exquisite prose and searing insight, INTO THE FIRE explores the many ways, small and large, we betray one another and our ideals. It's a compelling story about power, guilt and womanhood from an outstanding voice in Australian fiction.

Sonia Orchard is the author of a memoir, Something More Wonderful, and a novel The Virtuoso, which won the Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction of 2009. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and lives in the Macedon Ranges in Australia with her husband and three children.

Available products
Book Published 2019-01-01 by Affirm Press

Comments

Orchard succeeds in making this novel about ideas, not just characters. Focusing on a period of fifteen years, she examines how one's values and ambitions chane. Her characters are women attempting to balance work, study, travel, relationships and motherhood, and Orchard demonstrates the personal cost when those roles and priorities become overwhelming. This novel is a great choice for book club discussion. -- Readings, Fiction Book of the Month

[...] Into the Fire is a superbly crafted novel; the pacing of the plot allows for a psychologically unnerving unravelling, like a slow thriller - almost a whodunit. -- Sydney Morning Herald. Read more...

Orchard is an astute observer of long friendships, their binds, their blind loyalties, their casual betrayals. Alice, Crow and Lara will stay with me a long time. -- Kristina Olsson, author of The Shell

Perhaps what's most intriguing about this story is the sharp commentary on gender politics, comparing our university-age selves to our mid-career selves, and the subtle power of gaslighting. Into the Fire will appeal to fans of Emily Maguire, Zoë Heller and Sofie Laguna. -- Books + Publishing, 4-starred review

Into the Fire's honesty in looking at often ugly behavior, and its ability to knuckle down into the core of its characters' complexities, make it hard to put down. -- The Saturday Paper