The Book of fire by Christy Lefteri

 

This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so have I. I left him. I left him and now he may be dead. Once upon a time there was a beautiful village that held a million stories of love and loss and peace and war, and it was swallowed up by a fire that blazed up to the sky. The fire ran all the way down to the sea where it met with its reflection. 

A family from two nations, England and Greece, live a simple life on a tiny Greek island: Irini, Tasso and their daughter, lovely, sweet Chara, whose name means joy. Their life goes up in flames in a single day when one man starts a fire out of greed and indifference. Many are killed, homes are destroyed, and the island's natural beauty wiped out. In the wake of the fire, Chara bears deep scars across her back and arms. Tasso is frozen in trauma, devastated that he wasn't there when his family most needed him. And Irini is crippled by guilt at her part in the fate of the man who started the fire. But this family has survived, and slowly green shoots of hope and renewal will grow from the smouldering ruins of devastation.

Thanks so much to Bonnier Books for my gorgeous gifted Hardback. 

I read this book with my pal Kath and we both really enjoyed it, we read The Beekeeper of Aleppo a while ago so knew we’d like this one. The story of Irini, Tasso and Chara was so sad, so many times I had tears in my eyes. There's one scene which lasts a while, when they're escaping the wild fires and are in water, that part got me hooked. Listening to Irini’s storytelling, trying to keep chara and the old woman calm was so enchanting. The stories told throughout the book are sad and uplifting at the same time. I liked hearing about the past, and enjoyed the switching from then and now.

Christy Lefteri writes with such beauty, I remember talking to Kath about how lovely the forest had been described, I felt like I was right there. The paintings, the garden, the forests, all talked about with such love. Well done Ms Lefteri, another book very well written.