“A provocative literary work of weight and luster.”
—Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times Book Review
BOOKS
Because a Fire Was in My Head
A strangely American tale brilliantly narrated by one of our most original writers
Because a Fire Was in My Head
by Lynn Stegner
Length: 288 pages
Publisher: Bison Books
Publication date: April 1, 2009
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0803225145
hardcover | paperback | ebook
Available where all fine books are sold.
Kate Riley is not the sort of heroine we meet in most American novels. Self-centered, shape-shifting, driven from one man to another and one city to the next, she is all too real—but not at all the loyal and steady homebody of idealized womanhood. When we first encounter her, Kate (or Katherine, or Kate of the Prairie, or Katrina) is about to undergo exploratory brain surgery for a condition she herself has fabricated. Sobered by the gravity of the procedure, she commences a journey of memory that takes us back to the Saskatchewan village where she grew up and to the singular event that altered her forever and irrevocably set the course of her life.
From her childhood, in which she was held captive to a mother gone mad, through her adult life, which unfolds as a mesmerizing sequence of men, abandoned children, and perpetual movement, Kate’s story is one of desperation and remarkable invention, a strangely American tale brilliantly narrated by one of our most original writers.
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AWARDS & HONORS for Because a Fire Was in My Head
Faulkner Award for Best Novel
Literary Ventures Selection
BookSense Pick
New York Times Editors’ Choice
Reviews
“Stunning . . . The poetic detail of Stegner’s sentences—not to mention her wanton protagonist—is reminiscent of the novels of John Updike . . . Because a Fire Was in My Head, her most ambitious novel so far, ought to attract for Stegner the wider audience she so richly deserves.”
—New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“A novel fully realized on every level, Because a Fire Was in My Head is a provocative literary work of weight and luster. A risky, intermittently melodramatic tale, it casts light both on the timeless mysteries of the human psyche and on the paradoxes of a notoriously contrary epoch, namely, post-World War II North America . . . A bold and stunning novel.”
—Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“With bracing prose, Stegner turns a potential monster into a character both fascinating and pitiable; you may hate Kate, but you won’t want to leave her.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A brilliant book, more solid than the ground we stand on. This novel does honor to the best in the tradition of storytelling, even though you occasionally want to shove the heroine off the highest possible cliff. In other words, you are drawn into the story, and when you have finished you have added amplitude to your knowledge of the human condition.”
—Jim Harrison
“While everyone else is hip-deep in cozy mysteries, why not stand out from the crowd with a frigid and perturbing novel about a 20th-century version of Emma Bovary? The delusional adulteress in this case is Kate Riley, born in a Saskatchewan prairie village at the height of the Great Depression. Determined to escape the ‘miserable nonexistence’ of rural life, Kate bolts for Vancouver as soon as circumstances allow. There follows an array of catastrophic relationships and abandoned babies.
“Kate’s chosen form of therapy is nonstop motion. Instead of stewing in her failures, she finds new backdrops against which to scenically transgress: first Seattle and then California. The plot centers on the question of whether she will gain spiritual sentience. Like Flaubert’s, Stegner’s protagonist has only intermittent access to her own will.”
— Molly Young, The New York Times “What to Read”
“Since the novel’s anti-heroine is unabashedly self-absorbed and unsympathetic, convincing a reader to care for her is a true accomplishment. Four-time novelist Lynn Stegner pulls it off with panache. . . . Emotionally troubled characters are a dime a dozen, but Kate Riley’s sexual longings and American heart put her in a class of her own.”
—Bookmarks Magazine
“Who was ever on the side of the damned? After reading this novel, I’d nominate Lynn Stegner”
—Alan Cheuse, NPR
“Stegner’s supple use of language and precise evocation of period and place bring a literary intuitiveness to this inventive portrait of a scheming temptress, rendering with disarming psychological acuity Kate’s warring self-serving and self-destructive tendencies. Kate is too egocentric to be a sympathetic heroine, yet through Stegner’s masterful treatment, she does become a forceful, persuasive, and wholly mesmerizing character.”
—Booklist