Because a Fire Was in My Head (Flyover Fiction)

by Lynn Stegner

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803225148
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.4" x 0.7" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Because a Fire Was in My Head

A beautifully written work. When I reached the final chapter, "San Francisco," I didn't pick up the book for four days! . . . didn't want the reading journey to end. Lynn Stegner is a magnificent writer.

Stunning

This is my review from NewWest: www.newwest.net/main/article/lynn_stegners_because_a_fire_was_in_my_head/ Despite a slow beginning and a ragged ending, Santa Fe-based writer Lynn Stegner's new novel, Because a Fire Was in My Head, is an engrossing, satisfying tale. Over the course of the book, Kate Riley, the self-absorbed anti-heroine, travels through six decades, three countries, two marriages (one that lasts only a day), four children, and never really seems to learn that much. An Irish-Catholic girl raised in the Saskatchewan prairies in the 1930s, Kate comes from a place where "survival was more admirable than success." Through her various incarnations and homes, Kate survives, and does it a memorable way. In her characterization of Kate, Stegner avoids stereotypes of loving mothers and martyr women, but almost veers too much in the opposite direction. Kate is selfish, and complex. During the 1950s, an era known for perfect housewives, Kate avoids tending her baby and purposely contracts the flu so she won't have to breastfeed. Her wealthy and much older hotelier husband begs her to stay home and raise their son, but Kate pursues an accounts clerk position at a prominent bank and takes trips with her friends. With her long red hair and legs that don't quit, Kate also keeps a corral of "afternoon men." Her actions are simultaneously inspiring and horrifying. Fortunately, readers don't have to like misbehaving characters, we just have to be fascinated by them, and Kate Riley is fascinating. The single moment that changed Kate's life was her beloved father's death to pancreatic cancer. Kate was young and her mother "would have preferred the death of another child to the death of her husband." Fiona Riley does not engage in physical abuse, but her competitiveness and inability to forgive Kate for surviving while her husband died is chilling. Kate hardly existed to this woman except for when she became ill. In those moments, her mother, a nurse, gives Kate attention, although the detached treatment is the same as that Fiona's patients receive. This terrible mother/daughter relationship (and Fiona's presence is felt throughout the book), along with Kate's childish cluelessness about how her behavior affects other people, helps to make Kate and her awful actions bearable. She changes from an innocent girl leaving the prairie to a woman who begins to mirror her mother in sad, frightening ways, while creating some of her own unique dysfunctions. In her wake she leaves behind a paralyzed man, a drug addicted son, and baffled friends. Her many men, some good, some bad, were "like deposits in a bank account, there to draw upon when she found herself at a loss." In a terrible selfish moment, when Kate's son's life is endangered during one of her trysts, Stegner uses enough mystery to keep us hanging and enough misery for Kate to keep us reading. Kate is never truly penitent, she is too self-absorbed to realize the effects of her actions

Five stars with reservations

I couldn't put this book down, even when I wanted to. The main character is so revolting at times, I wanted to quit reading the book, but you are compelled to keep going, it becomes painful to keep going-one becomes addicted to the character's wretchedness. The main thing that bothered me was the authors time line when the book hits the 1960's. The author has the Kennedy era happening at the exact same time as the Haight-Asbury /drug/free love scene in the late 60's. Get your time lines right!