Synopsis "Fires Which Burned Brightly: A Life in Progress"
‘The only dividend of the years’ vanishing, as far as I can see, is that it makes aspects of the past appear more interesting or humorous than they felt at the time.’
In Fires Which Burned Brightly, Faulks, a reluctant memoirist, offers readers a series of detailed snapshots from a life in progress. They include a post-war rural childhood – ‘cold mutton and wet washing on a rack over the range’ – the booze-sodden heyday of Fleet Street and a career as one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists.
There are not one, but two daring escapes from boarding school; the delirium of a jetlagged American book tour; the writing of Birdsong in his brother’s house in 1992; and memorable trips across the channel to France. Politics, psychiatry and frustrated ventures into the world of entertainment are analysed with patience and rueful humour.
The book is driven by a desire ‘to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ It ends with a tribute to Faulks’s parents and a sense of how his own generation was shaped by the disruptive power of war and its aftermath.
Sharply perceptive and alive with a generous wit, Fires Which Burned Brightly is a work of subtle yet profound intelligence and warmth.
Sebastian Faulks is one of our finest living authors, a writer whose work has often explored the fragility of human sanity and how easily it can unravel . . . A wise and heartfelt piece of writing - The Times
Intriguing, fascinating and enlightening . . . filled with gratitude and charm, but also full of evidence of the endless curiosity that is every great novelist’s weapon of choice - Nick Duerden, i Paper
A wonderful portrait of an age, and of a writer - RORY STEWART, author of Politics on the Edge
Utterly fascinating - DAVID KYNASTON, author of A Northern Wind
