5/5 stars
What's it about? A lightning strike in the Sierra Nevada creates the wildfire known as Spitcat, which rages over eleven days in this outstanding nail-biter of a nature novel. Though intricate portraits of the firefighters, animal inhabitants, and the forest itself, Stewart crafts a luxurious landscape in which readers will become heartbreakingly invested.
How’d I find it? Fire was the August 2024 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club, which you absolutely need in your life.
Who will enjoy this book? Fans of The Overstory by Richard Powers or Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson will not be able to put Fire down.
What stood out? This read utterly enchanted me. Chapters open with a philosophical or historical treatment of fire, including the glorious line “Lightning is the true Prometheus,” before zooming into the happenings of one of the book’s characters, including the Spitcat herself. I couldn’t get enough of John Bartley, the ranger who loves the trees as family, and Judith, the plucky young lookout who first sees smoke. Originally published in 1948, the book suffers from some racist and sexist language, its only weakness.
Which line made me feel something? Stewart’s writing blew my socks off. Take, for example: “Now a fire is more like a shape-shifting monster, stretching out long and encircling arms before it. Now a fire is like a nation, growing weak for a while, and then springing up with a new vigor, as millions of flamelets within it die, or as new flamelets blaze up. But—man or monster or nation—like them all, the fire is the thing-in-itself. It begins, and is, and ends; it is born, and lives, and dies.”
