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Friday, December 13, 2024

The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri - Book Review

Publication Date: 02nd Jan 2024 

Genre: Literary Fiction 

4.5 Stars 

One Liner: Sad but beautiful; a bit meandering 

Greece 

Irini, a musician, lives with her painter husband, Tasso, and their sweet ten-year-old daughter Chara. They live in a beautiful home deep in an ancient forest bordering a seaside village. One day, a raging forest fire devours the village and many of its people. Chara is injured. Tasso’s hands are burnt and he lost his sense of purpose. 

Irini does her best to survive the aftermath and return to a new routine with her family like everyone else in the region. However, one day she stumbles upon the man responsible for the fire; the man whose greed led to utter destruction. Irini makes a split-second decision that stays with her forever. 

The story comes in the first-person POV of Irini and snippets from The Book of Fire in the third-person. 

My Thoughts: 

We need to be in a certain mood for some books. This is one such example. I pushed this down my 2024 list because I wasn’t in the right mindset for it back then.

As someone who loves forests (shamelessly plugging my book Forests and Faeries), I 1000% enjoyed the descriptions of the region. So mesmerizing, vivid, and surreal! It felt as if I was in the forest, walking barefoot and breathing in the special scent. Bliss! (On that note, some readers may find this excessive)

Irini’s narration takes some time to get used to. She likes to go around in circles. I’d call this borderline stream of consciousness. Once you get into the flow, it’ll become easier to follow where her thoughts take her. Also, she is not someone who likes to face disturbing things, so her avoidance makes the narration go around in circles. Interestingly, this shapes her daughter’s personality (and I did feel sad for the kid a few times). 

Half the details are provided through chapters titled The Book of Fire. These have a sort of distant tone, which makes sense and works well to balance Irini’s first-person POV in the other chapters. We also get some history lessons without a load of info dump. 

NGL, I expected the book to be slow. But it is not! Wouldn’t call it fast-paced but it is steady and has a good tempo. Or maybe it is because I like to lose myself in the forest. 

There’s a bit of repetition and some discrepancies in details. Also, the dialogues sound a bit off. However, these are minor complaints. 

The ending is hopeful, a necessity since the book has heavy melancholy, pain, and tragedy. While not everything is fixed, there is enough happiness to find peace and accept reality. 

The author’s note is informative and thought-provoking. It is also probably the only lyrical author’s note I read so far. This makes the note feel more like an extension of the book than a separate entity added at the end. 

To summarize, The Book of Fire is a heartbreakingly beautiful, lyrical, and poignant story of people, nature, family, and life. It is a heavy read so pick it up when you are in the mood for something like this. 

And oh, thank you for mentioning how to pronounce Chara (C is silent) right when the character was introduced. I wasn’t sure if it was ‘Ch’ara or ‘K’ara. Neither, apparently! 

Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine, for eARC. 

#NetGalley #TheBookOfFire

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