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The Fires: A Novel by Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir

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yvo_about_books's review against another edition

2.25

Finished reading: February 2nd 2023

"Poets can prattle on about love, but I know her, I've seen her at work. Love is nothing but a natural disaster."

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Amazon Crossing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

I can never resist a good Nordic noir story, and I was intrigued by The Fires as soon as I read the blurb. I loved the sound of the Icelandic setting, the focus on the volcano science and the natural disaster element, and I was excited to try a new-to-me Icelandic author in translation. I can't deny there is so much potential here in this book! Sadly, the actual story didn't exactly live up to expectations for me though for multiple reasons.

First of all, I have to stress that I still love the premise of The Fires. The natural disaster element, the volcanology, the Icelandic setting... It all had so much potential and it was one of the main reasons why I wanted to read this story in the first place. I do love it when a story manages to teach me something new along the way, so I was initially very excited by the amount of science incorporated into the plot. Then I started to wonder if I had actually picked up a non fiction title instead with only a minor fictional sideline... Because the fact is: about 60-70% of the story is basically volcanology theory, with SO much scientific details that it makes your head spin. Like I said, I don't mind learning something new, but this was just an overload of science and not enough fictional story to balance things out. I feel that only people who are extremely interested in volcanology and want to learn ALL the details will make it to the end without skimreading. (I know I didn't, even though I was interested initially.)

Another major struggle I had was with the fictional part of The Fires. Not only did it feel a bit underdeveloped after the sheer amount of scientific details, I wasn't all too happy with the content either. This mainly had to do with the fact that I never warmed up to the main character Anna, and only started to despise her even more after the active cheating element was introduced. Was her role as a volcanologist intriguing? Yes. But I really hated having to spend time with her and seeing her treat her husband and family that way. Also, insta-love much? This story would have been so much better without the romance cliches... Then again, I can't say I was a fan of the family drama included either.

I also wasn't sure what to make of the writing style itself. While I did like the almost poetical way of describing certain scenes, I did wonder why on earth the dialogues weren't properly marked. There was no punctuation whatsoever to indictate what part of the text was actually spoken out loud or who was saying it, and I actually had to reread paragraphs more than once to fully understand what was going on. I'm not sure if this was a formatting error or on purpose (I hope it was the first), but it slowed down the pace considerably and got really frustrating after a while. The pace was quite slow in general, up until the final 20% or so where all hell broke loose.

All in all, The Fires didn't end up being the exciting natural disaster thriller I thought it would be (or at least not until you reach the final part of the story). Instead, it's a rather dense and scientific oriented volcanology account with an unwanted cheating element thrown in. Definitely not for me, but it might work better for you even you don't mind the science overload or the romance cliches.

thepeachmartini's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Wow. I don't even know where to begin to unpack this. I picked this book as one of the Amazon Prime picks for January - the cover intrigued me, and the subject matter intrigued me....or what I THOUGHT the subject matter was going to be: volcanoes, an impending volcano disaster, and the effects it has on a woman and her family.

The first hurdle was the formatting; I admittedly don't read a lot of books that have been translated, so I am not used to this, but the dialogue is not formatted in the 'normal' manner. It all runs in with the text, so I was continually re-reading the same paragraphs multiple times to make sure I didn't miss anything.

The second hurdle was how technical this was. I love science and I love learning about things like volcanoes and earthquakes, and how the earth moves and shifts to shape our lives in all manner of ways. There were times this almost felt like a white paper on some aspect of volcanology, and mixed with the wonky formatting of dialog it made it hard to follow some of the conversations.

The third and most critical hurdle, in my opinion was the main character - Anna. I could not connect with her at all, at any point in this story. Anna was selfish and self-righteous, to the point of making me very frustrated and angry with her. Normally, I like it when a character challenges me, but not in this case. I am marking the rest of this as a spoiler, so proceed with caution... it also might be a little disjointed, because I'm still trying to organize my thoughts.

I know she was damaged goods from a mother who suffered from mental illness (postpartum and bipolar it almost seemed like, but I don't recall that it was ever really identified - I'm not a doctor, nor have I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express lately.) but there had to have been more to it than that for her to be as bitter as she was about 'frivolous' things like true love and gut feelings. And the way she talked about only caring for her mother out of spite, and not really because she WANTED to care for her just put me off. And the way in which she just seemed to go through the motions of her daily life with her family - as though everything around her was some sort of scientific equation that needed a precise outcome. Life is not like that, and to go through life having raised TWO KIDS, I'm not sure how you could still be so closed-minded to things like feelings, human emotions and human reactions, and instinct.

The marriage between Anna and her husband was sad...it felt one-sided and I was not surprised when Tomas showed up in the picture. I didn't fully understand her husband's intentions in the marriage - it often seemed like material items and wealth were what he wanted to provide her with, and supported her self-righteousness; and yet, through all of that, she is always depicted (in my mind anyway) as being a bit homely and not as polished as her lifestyle would make her seem. She goes from wanting to hide everything from her husband to confessing and wanting to try to salvage things and resolve them amicably, but then she continues to see Tomas off and on...and then gets mad at her husband when he brings up separation. Then she gets mad at Tomas when she suspects he might be having a fling with someone else...

Ultimately this story is one about relationships: humans and their relationship to their environment, the relationship between an economy and keeping a community safe, Anna and her relationship with her mother, Anna and her relationship with her spouse/lover, Anna's relationship with the world around her, and Anna's relationship with herself.

In each facet, we can see how broken she is, yet how she doesn't seem to acknowledge the harm she may be doing to others - or herself - which is a bit ironic when she's the one who is supposed to make the decisions about alert levels for the volcano and keeping the community safe...a point, which I may say is not forgotten as the story progresses and she reminds us quite often just how much she feels a responsibility to protect the community, yet she caves into the pressures of the economic and tourism trades. What's the worst that could happen? She ignores the feelings she has that something is not quite right, keeps them hidden from all but one person because she is afraid to show she truly is human and has thoughts and feelings like a human.

The ending...I can't say I'm surprised, but I think it was pretty sh*tty of her to put Tomas into a situation like that and then leave him behind...leave everyone behind. Was it just to get out of the bind she was in? She did have a lot to face when it was all said and done: infidelity, betrayal, professionally she didn't stand up for what was right, even though she knew she should have. Was it in spite of her own mother, who would never have done the same for her? She had to have the last say - the last twist of the knife to show she was the bigger person. Was it worth it?

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