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A review by brice_mo
Fire Exit by Morgan Talty
2.75
Thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for the ARC!
Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit is a good story that doesn’t fit well in a novel.
Thematically, there are some interesting concepts about identity—particularly in the context of blood quantum—because the narrator is a white man who was raised on a reservation. This aspect of the book is largely held in the background, which keeps it subtle and lends complexity to the story without playing into tropes.
Unfortunately, Fire Exit seems like it just doesn’t belong in a book of this length. Everything about it would be more at home in a tightly crafted short story, whereas it feels slack and cumbersome in a full-length novel. It’s written such that readers gradually learn more about its characters’ past, which might feel satisfying if constrained to a few pages, but because the book is so contingent on a constant unfurling of “major revelations,” it begins to consume itself, with each revelation carrying less weight. Furthermore, the characters always feel a little impressionistic, so learning more about them doesn’t add much shade or dimension—the new information just feels needlessly deferred.
When the book finally picks up momentum near its cataclysmic end, it feels like too little, too late, and I wished I could have just read those 50 or so pages independently. To be clear, I don’t think novels are obligated to take any particular shape—it can be enjoyable to feel a writer’s self-conscious decisions about form through the text; in Fire Exit, though, it feels less like intentionality and more like uncertainty.
All in all, I found Fire Exit to be deeply disappointing. It isn’t bad by any means—maybe I would have enjoyed it more if it were—but it feels strangely obligatory, like a book that was required to exist instead of a book that needed to.
Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit is a good story that doesn’t fit well in a novel.
Thematically, there are some interesting concepts about identity—particularly in the context of blood quantum—because the narrator is a white man who was raised on a reservation. This aspect of the book is largely held in the background, which keeps it subtle and lends complexity to the story without playing into tropes.
Unfortunately, Fire Exit seems like it just doesn’t belong in a book of this length. Everything about it would be more at home in a tightly crafted short story, whereas it feels slack and cumbersome in a full-length novel. It’s written such that readers gradually learn more about its characters’ past, which might feel satisfying if constrained to a few pages, but because the book is so contingent on a constant unfurling of “major revelations,” it begins to consume itself, with each revelation carrying less weight. Furthermore, the characters always feel a little impressionistic, so learning more about them doesn’t add much shade or dimension—the new information just feels needlessly deferred.
When the book finally picks up momentum near its cataclysmic end, it feels like too little, too late, and I wished I could have just read those 50 or so pages independently. To be clear, I don’t think novels are obligated to take any particular shape—it can be enjoyable to feel a writer’s self-conscious decisions about form through the text; in Fire Exit, though, it feels less like intentionality and more like uncertainty.
All in all, I found Fire Exit to be deeply disappointing. It isn’t bad by any means—maybe I would have enjoyed it more if it were—but it feels strangely obligatory, like a book that was required to exist instead of a book that needed to.