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    Things We Set on Fire
    Things We Set on Fire
    Things We Set on Fire
    Audiobook6 hours

    Things We Set on Fire

    Written by Deborah Reed

    Narrated by Tanya Eby

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A series of tragedies brings Vivvie's young grandchildren into her custody, and her two estranged daughters back under one roof. Jackson, Vivvie’s husband, was shot and killed thirty years ago, and the ramifications have splintered the family into their own isolated remembrances and recriminations.

    Sisters Elin and Kate fought mercilessly in childhood and have avoided each other for years. Elin seems like the last person to watch her sister convalesce after an attempted suicide. But Elin has her own reasons for coming to Kate's side and will soon discover Kate’s own staggering needs.

    This deeply personal, hauntingly melancholy look at the damages families inflict on each other—and the healing that only they can provide—is filled with flinty, flawed, and complex people stumbling toward some kind of peace. Like Elizabeth Strout and Kazuo Ishiguro, Deborah Reed understands a story, and its inhabitants reveal themselves in the subtleties: the space between the thoughts, the sigh behind the smile, and the unreliable lies people tell themselves that ultimately reveal the deepest truths.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateDec 1, 2013
    ISBN9781480567153
    Things We Set on Fire
    Author

    Deborah Reed

    DEBORAH REED is the author of the novels Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan, The Days When Birds Come Back,Olivay,Things We Set on Fire, and Carry Yourself Back to Me. She has written two thrillers under the pen name Audrey Braun. She lives on the coast of Oregon and is the owner of Cloud and Leaf, an independent bookstore in Manzanita, Oregon.

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    Reviews for Things We Set on Fire

    3.5/5

    64 ratings8 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      This is really the story of a dysfunctional family, from beginning to end. I think the author attempted to correct the situation to make a "they lived happily ever after" storybook ending, she did not do a good job. This book was just boring! I kept waiting for the climax, kept waiting for the "point" of the book to be made clear, but I never realized any of those things!
    • 2/5
      This is really the story of a dysfunctional family, from beginning to end. I think the author attempted to correct the situation to make a "they lived happily ever after" storybook ending, she did not do a good job. This book was just boring! I kept waiting for the climax, kept waiting for the "point" of the book to be made clear, but I never realized any of those things!
    • 4/5
      This is one of those books that will stick with me. It made me think a lot about the things we keep secret, and how those things can lead to spirals of events and emotions that we'll never even know of.

      In some ways this book was hard to read. It was heartbreaking and poignant. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      The writing in this book is exceptional. Reed's prose sings on every page and took my breath away in places. The story is about a Vivvie, her daughters and her granddaughters. In the opening scene Vivvie intentionally shoots her husband. The reason for her action, and the consequences of it, form the basis for the estrangement of the characters. As the histories and secrets unfold, we come to understand the power and limitations of forgiveness and its flip side, regret. I adored this story.
    • 3/5
      At first I loved this book, with just the right emotional intensity and interesting characters. But somehow it just never went anywhere for me after that. The story about a mom with two adult daughters who are both, in varying degrees, estranged from her, was one that I thought would really pull me in, but the characters were never really given enough depth to engage me very much. At the same time, this author does have good writing skills, good at descriptive detail, and should have been able to do much more with this story.
    • 5/5
      Things we Set on FireBy Deborah ReedThis is a deceptively simple story of a dysfunctional family, still reeling after many years from the loss of their beloved husband and father. In the intervening years, the Vivvie Fenton has grieved and been unable to move on because she knows that she’s the one who killed Jackson Fenton. The daughters, Kate and Elin, are equally damaged, because they also lost their mother when she became disengaged from life; and their sibling rivalry became so toxic they separated for seven years. Everything changes when Vivvie is notified by the police that Kate has attempted suicide and the children, Averlee and Quincy, need their family to step in and take care of them. Since Vivvie and Elin didn’t know about the girls, they’re shocked, not to mention nervous about parenting two children they knew nothing about. They assume that Kate overdosed on drugs.Then the secrets begin to come out.I checked out reviews on both Amazon and Library Thing and I’m surprised at the wide range of opinion. The Amazon readers liked it; not so much with the Library Thing. I loved it and I would highly recommend it.
    • 3/5
      Deborah Reed’s Things We Set on Fire is all about family secrets and the potential that these secrets have to destroy a family over time. It tells the story of the Fentons, mother and two daughters, a little family that learns the hard way how easily it can be destroyed when everyone refuses to talk about the secret they all know but are afraid to openly examine.The girls, Elin and Kate, lose their father suddenly. One moment he is there and the family is thriving, the next he is gone, victim of an unsolved shooting that authorities consider to be a tragic accident. Now, some thirty years later, the three women are forced to confront the secrets that almost destroyed them all those years ago. They have no choice. Kate, the mother of two little girls, is in the hospital near death, and her children, although they know neither their grandmother nor their aunt, have no one else in the world to care for them. What happens next is not what any of them expected.The characters of Things We Set on Fire are generally sympathetic ones even when their behavior is at its most irritatingly selfish. That Reed’s female characters are so flawed does make them considerably more believable than their near-perfect male counterparts, but this contrast leaves the novel with a “TV Movie” feel. The relatively short novel would have packed more of an emotional punch had Reed more fully developed each of her five main characters and their individual side stories. As it stands, Things We Set on Fire is more representative of the sometimes denigrated genre “chick-lit” than it is of a literary novel.
    • 4/5
      I finished this book two days ago and I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. The writing itself is beautiful. Deborah Reed captures all the little details that bring a scene to life. I felt the sticky heat and heard the cicadas chirping. I saw each movement playing out in my mind.From the first page, we're brought into the midst of family dysfunction. The emotions are deep, dark and compelling. But what makes this story poignant also makes it incredibly hard to read. By midway through, I was desperate for a sliver of hope within all the misery. The characters are well developed, almost tangible. I could see them all as real people in the room with me. But, aside from the two little girls, I didn't particularly like them. What might once have been intense love turned into indifference bordering on dislike, and I'm not quite sure the explanation for that made sense. They leave one another floundering and only seem to care when it's too late. I badly wanted a different ending, a different choice from one of the characters that would have offered me that sliver of hope I craved. But life and books don't always give me what I want, and that leaves me here wondering how I feel about the journey.