She Treads Softly: Burn

Saturday, August 10, 2024

Burn

Burn by Peter Heller
8/13/24; 304 pages
Knopf Doubleday

Burn by Peter Heller is a very highly recommended dystopian survival story full of personal reflection. This is an exceptional literary novel - one of the best of the year.

Jess and Storey have been friends since boyhood who go to rural Maine every year to camp and hunt. This year they emerge from the woods to find a bridge blown up and continue on to find small towns burned down and no sign of life. As they keep hiking, trying to find a way home, they search for food left in boats, encounter more destruction, and a few armed men. They knew all summer secession mania had been rampant in the entire state and had been spreading but they didn't expect this. Then the two discover a five-year-old girl, Collie, and know they have to help her survive while they try to find her family.

The narrative is told from Jess's point-of-view. In between the action scenes, Jess contemplates his failed marriage and memories of his long friendship with Storey. Jess's inner thoughts provides a keen insight into his personality and character while also bringing the setting and landscape to life through his descriptions. It also makes their journey through the war-torn area more poignant as the two long time friends try to find a way out of the danger, along with their new responsibility to Collie.

Actions the two men take for survival in this changed landscape during an unknown conflict are understandable and relatable. Their journey begs the question: What would anyone do if they faced and had to navigate the same high stakes dilemma on foot with little knowledge of what is going on? The divided country's strife is present in the civil war but Heller never gives political details or accusations.

Heller is an excellent writer and masterfully captures the descriptions of the natural world, the disconcerting journey, and the friendship of Jess and Storey. Burn is a literary wilderness adventure that melds with a dystopian survival story that is full of real emotional depth, courage, and thoughtful actions. Thanks to Knopf Doubleday for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.