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House on Fire

by Charles Foran

Charles Foran has the mixed fortune to be an author whose writing is admired by critics and awards committees, but overlooked by many readers. It’s not for lack of skill, or effort. In addition to a prolific career as a magazine journalist, the Ontario-based Foran has produced two novels (Kitchen Music, Butterfly Lovers), a memoir (The Story of My Life So Far), and two other works of non-fiction. This is a writer who needs, and perhaps deserves, his breakthrough book. Unfortunately, House on Fire is unlikely to be it.

Pitched as a literary thriller, the novel is set in Bon, capital of a Tibet-like country called Gyatso. Its social and political complexities are witnessed by a Canadian-born visitor, businessman Dominic Wilson. Ostensibly in Bon on holiday, Wilson finds himself under scrutiny by the less-than-benign Bon Tourism Office for suspicious behaviour. His return flight home to Hong Kong is indefinitely cancelled. Awaiting resolution, he encounters an array of Bon residents: fellow visitors, native Gyatsians, and Shamos – the pejorative nickname for the country’s occupiers. Observer becomes participant, and Wilson discovers that in Gyatso, every move that he makes has unpredictable consequences.

In the past, Foran has demonstrated a gift for creating complicated, worldly characters. House on Fire spreads that talent thin. There are compelling figures throughout the book: for instance, Wilson’s wife, an angry Filipina obsessed with the fate of migrant workers from her homeland. However, the majority of the cast, combined with a frequent shifting of narrative focus, leaves the reader underengaged and overwhelmed. There’s also a self-consciously literary tone to some of the dialogue that works against Foran’s intent to highlight the story’s human stakes.

From the novel’s title to its revelations about hidden identity, House on Fire is designed as an intense, gripping reading experience. But Foran – usually an able storyteller – undermines himself. An unrelenting appearance-versus-reality motif actually depletes the story of its suspense, as the reader is so frequently knocked into left field that it eventually proves more rewarding to simply wait on the sidelines and see what transpires. Ambition and breadth are to be lauded in a writer, but here Charles Foran exhausts even as he impresses.

 

Reviewer: Lisa Godfrey

Publisher: HarperFlamingo Canada

DETAILS

Price: $32

Page Count: 400 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 0-00-224551-5

Released: Feb.

Issue Date: 2001-3

Categories: Fiction: Novels

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