By John Boyne
A 2024 Top Rated Read
Freya is a successful, respected surgeon working in a hospital burns unit. She's unmarried, childless and lives life her own way. She drives an expensive car and home is a fancy apartment in an affluent development. To outward appearances she's a strong, independent woman. However, as a child she experienced a trauma. The question now is: did that trauma shape her into the person she's become or was it always her destiny regardless? Inside Freya there's a darkness that's cruel and dangerous.
Fire is the third novella in John Boyne's 'Elements' series and my favourite to date. The theme of nurture versus nature is explored. Freya is a fascinating character who appears to be paying the world back for what happened to her as a child. She knows her actions are illegal and abusive but has a craving inside that can't be satiated. The novella is excellent. Boyne has a knack of sucking you in until you're completely immersed. The story is immensely disturbing yet totally gripping. A fantastic read.
Fire is the third novella in John Boyne's 'Elements' series and my favourite to date. The theme of nurture versus nature is explored. Freya is a fascinating character who appears to be paying the world back for what happened to her as a child. She knows her actions are illegal and abusive but has a craving inside that can't be satiated. The novella is excellent. Boyne has a knack of sucking you in until you're completely immersed. The story is immensely disturbing yet totally gripping. A fantastic read.
★★★★★
- Hardcover: 176 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday
- Publication Year: 2024
- Author: John Boyne
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Synopsis
On the face of it, Freya lives a gilded existence, dancing solely to her own tune. She has all the trappings of wealth and privilege, a responsible job as a surgeon specialising in skin grafts, a beautiful flat in a sought-after development, and a flash car. But it wasn’t always like this. Hers is a life founded on darkness.
Did what happened to Freya as a child one fateful summer influence the adult she would become – or was she always destined to be that person? Was she born with cruelty in her heart or did something force it into being?
In Fire, John Boyne takes the reader on a chilling, uncomfortable but utterly compelling psychological journey to the epicentre of the human condition, asking the age-old question: nurture – or nature?
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