Random Things Tours: A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins

 

I may confess that I was not so enthralled by The Girl on the Train and even less about Into the Water by Paula Hawkins but as in the case of one author´s writing style, also tastes and literary criteria are changing, improving and mature. Thus, her third, A Slow Fire Burning is for me, by far, one of her best books equally for the complexity of the characters, story and of the writing in general.

For me, and I bet not only for me, this was a strongly emotional experience. The characters from the story, set in London, in Islington and Clerkenwell, alongside Regen´s Canal (there is a very inspired map at the beginning of the book tracing the local geography) can be your neighbours or your relatives or one of the many people with whom you cross paths every day. Anonymous inhabitans of a big city. And they are, oh, so damaged not because they chose for or they were born to, but because at a certain moment, someone damaged them. A someone that, maybe, was also damaged at a certain point by someone else. Who...

It may sound very old psychology, but a damaged child is a very damaged adult. No matter who exactly is creating the damage and the reasons behind it. And this is what 90% of the characters from A Slow Fire Burning are coping with: a deep trauma that turned their life into a nightmare. As adults, they just give up to alcoholism, anger, self-harming, eating disorders. 

´But power shifts, doesn´t it? Sometimes in unexpected ways. Power shifts, and worms turn´.

The predominant characters in the book - Miriam, Laura, Carla, Irene, Angela - are women. Women who are trying their powers, restraining themselves, defending themselves from men or other women in shifting positions of power. As Daniel Sutherland is found dead in his houseboat, it is first Laura, a young lady with a long history of aggressions who is the culprit no. 1. However, she is not the only one in the story whose behavior does not match its emotional state. The ways in which the characters secrets are intertwinned is deceiving and I may confess that I placed my bets completely wrong - not on Laura, anyway, but on someone else but not on the right person anyway.

From my point of view, besides the circumstances, the drama of the characters is also because they are dealing with a standard definition of ´normality´ - in terms of physical appearance, lifestyle, mental profile - and the social expectations attached to it. Relying on such standards may be as poisonous as the childhood drama.

There are men characters in the book as well - Theo, the successful writer through which the authors introduces diplomatically into the story a couple of topics related to the publishing industry; the absent fathers. Compared to the women, though, they don´t have to exert and display their power. They have it already, it´s only a matter of momentum when they will actually use it, or just run away. I´ve felt a fine gender disbalance between characters which may feel suffocating sometimes.  

What Paula Hawkins is admirably doing in this novel is not only to create perfectly coherent and build-up characters, but also stories and multiple voices that not necessarily interfer. I´ve had more than once the feeling that I am in a room with multiple echoes but unable to grasp the difference between illusion - or the voice of trauma - and reality. In fact, all the characters do may have a reason to kill because their wounds are so deep and salty. 

In a way, the crime is less important compared to the psychology of the characters, their relationships between the different women characters and the extent of their emotional numbness. A small disclosure: the culprit is a woman.

A Slow Fire Burning is not an easy book both in terms of the accounts and the darksides of the characters. But it is a reminder how important is to treat each other well and with contempt. But, if world is perfect, how would I read such thoughtful and suspenseful books?

Rating: 4 stars

Disclosure: Book offered as part of the blog tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own