The Great Fire (2003)

On aurait pu nommer ce livre "sous les cendres"... Une ambiance, une époque, cicatrisante mais encore douloureuse. ( )

I was not impressed - Bored Stiff ( )

It took me a while to get into this book. The actual plot is not that exciting but the characters are interesting and the setting is quite remarkable, casting a light on WWII veterans living in China and Japan to write reports, their coping with getting back to some kind of normal. ( )

Ugh! This was tedious and a bit painful. Aldred Leith and Helen Driscoll are blah characters. There was nothing truly interesting about either of them as presented. You would certainly expect something to grab you about Aldred given his war experiences and subsequent travels in Asia. There is no romance in Aldred and Helen's romance. I wanted to yell at Aldred to either pursue his love or to withdraw. To Helen, I wanted to say love is not supposed to be this depressing. The subplot involving Peter's illness seems to promise more insight, but Aldred appears to withdraw from his friend's challenge to make sense of life. The Great Fire, at least in how the title refers to Hiroshima, is almost non-existent.

I recognize that this novel may have a treasure that I have left undiscovered. But I tried, and found little that I could embrace.

( )

I enjoyed this novel a lot, not the least for reading it while living through another time when mass trauma seems to manifest itself everywhere and there is a constant awareness that things are changing, in my case in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and protest against police brutality and systemic racism. It was comforting, in an odd way, to read about characters making their way through the wreckage of world war, and choosing a path toward happiness. ( )