Notes On Surviving The Fire a haunting exploration of trauma and vengeance

Midway through American writer Christine Murphy's haunting debut novel, Notes On Surviving The Fire, protagonist Sarah Common remembers her childhood in Maine.

- Srinidhi Ragavendran

NOTES ON SURVIVING THE FIRE By Christine Murphy Fiction/Wildfire/Paperback/ 288 pages/$34.95 ★★★★★

She recalls: "Movies taught me people kill because they want to, because it makes the world a better place. Guns, I learned, are not for feeding yourself, but for restoring order. Somebody kills your wife. You kill the somebody. Credits roll. Everything is better."

Now in California as a final-year PhD student researching violence in Buddhist traditions, Sarah, however, knows that revenge is never this neat. As wildfires rage through the state, she is engulfed in the smothering smoke of chaos, grief and moral ambiguity after the sudden death of her best friend, Nathan.

He died from an alleged heroin overdose. Sarah, however, does not believe it and cannot let it go.

Readers are informed early on that there is foul play involved. She says simply: "My friend who is dead, had a needle in his left arm. My friend who is dead, is left-handed."