Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #920310 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In these two novellas, Cheuse (The Grandmothers' Club; Lost and Old Rivers; etc.) dissects the aftermath of two very different deaths: one, of an American businessman traveling in Russia; the other, a mother, jazz pianist and drug addict. In the first novella, The Fires a museum worker named Gina learns that her husband, Paul, died in a car accident while en route to Uzbekistan. Gina travels to Russia to ensure her husband gets cremated, per his wishes, and the foreign, surreal and familiar collide when Gina takes Paul's body to a Hindu ceremony to be cremated. The Exorcism applies much more overt dark humor to similar feelings in a substantially different character. An unnamed baby boomer discusses his sadness following the sudden death of his first wife, renowned jazz pianist Billie Benjamin, who fatally overdosed on heroin. Billie's death hits her daughter, Ceely, hard (she lashes out postcremation by torching a piano at her college), and the narrator's fond recollections of courting Billie are not received warmly by his new wife. Misery is in greater supply than comfort throughout, and Cheuse approaches his subjects from interesting angles, making these novellas of grief strangely compelling. (Sept.)
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From Booklist
Book critic Cheuse, whose resonant commentaries are heard on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, returns to fiction after the essay collection Listening to the Page (2001). Cheuse ignites fire in the mind and in the heart in a pair of tightly written novellas (the dialogue volleys as smoothly as that of a play) that form a yin-yang of grief and healing. In the title story, a woman suffering the debilitating hot flashes of menopause journeys to Uzbekistan to collect the body of her husband, who died in a fiery accident, and finds herself participating in a Hindu cremation. In "The Exorcism," a man struggles with his own conflagration of sorrow after his ex-wife, a brilliant jazz musician, dies of a heroin overdose. He then offers sanctuary to their college-student daughter, whose mourning turns dangerously incendiary. Startlingly beautiful in their searing radiance and molten heat, Cheuse's poetic tales of pain and forgiveness, loss and remembrance stoke our age-old fascination with fire as a force of destruction and renewal. Seaman, Donna

Review

Customer Reviews

Wonderful
Absolutely top notch work (not like you'd expect anything different from Alan, really). This is a perfect way to pass a weekend with a book. Gripping but... funny! Wow.

Uncomfortable Journeys
Our small book club found an enormous amount to talk about in these two tight little novellas. Alan Cheuse is brilliant at using the eyes of his characters to see the world and their voices to give life to their stories. They were two odd and uncomfortable journeys : A middle-aged American woman winds up at a mourner at a Hindu cremation ceremony in Uzbekhistan; An electrical engineer helps his daughter grieve for her mother, a jazz singer who died of a heroin over-dose. We were left feeling the psychic jet lag, spiritual hangovers and savoring the impossibly rich aftertastes of these roundabouts. I'd read more of his work without hesitation.

Luminous and Indelible
The more I think about them, these novellas strike me to be a marvelous sort of literary ying and yang especially in the carefully drawn fugues of madness that beset the characters on both foreign and domestic soil. In The Fires Cheuse captures the feverish momentum of a solitary traveler in strange, far-flung location; in The Exorcism it's more the dislocation of family members who are dealing with the aftermath of an accidental death. Indeed, both stories seem to be hinged on the deaths of characters who hold in thrall all the people around them. And again, the blend of exotic and domestic: the appropriate fire in the Hindu temple; the inappropriate fire on a college campus. And the subtly drawn culture clash in both, the misunderstandings and mishaps due to an inability to communicate.

The best fiction to me always manages to present an image that burns an indelible hole in my memory. It disturbs me because it inexplicably suggests volumes, not only about the world the author has created but also perfectly conveys the writing's complex emotional terrain. This actually happens twice in these novellas. The first time it happens is when Paul's automobile has broken down and he sees the woman dragging a bundle on a triangular cart that turns out to be a loony child with a pointed cap. The second time it happens is when Swanson and Ceely are driving back to D.C. and they suddenly see a pack of dogs skittering in between the cars. These are both stunning descriptions; and their éclat makes both these fictions remarkably luminous.