A year after her best friend died in a house fire, Lara can’t come to terms with the loss. Logic says there was no more she could have done to save the mercurial and unhappy Alice, but Lara can’t escape the feeling that she is somehow to blame for the tragedy.
She spends a weekend at the rebuilt house with Alice’s charismatic widower, Crow, and his three young children. Rummaging through the remains of their shared past, Lara reveals a friendship with Alice that was as troubled as it was intense. But beneath the surface is a darker, more unsettling secret waiting to be exposed.
Through exquisite prose and searing insight, Into the Fire explores the many ways, small and large, we betray one another and our ideals. It’s a compelling story about power, guilt and womanhood from an outstanding voice in Australian fiction.
About the Author
Sonia Orchard is the author of a memoir, Something More Wonderful, and a novel The Virtuoso, which won the Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction of 2009. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and lives in the Macedon Ranges with her husband and three children.
Industry Reviews
"Orchard is a superb storyteller. Her writing is intimate and animated, with a lullaby quality. Part homage to motherhood, part critique of third-wave feminism, Into the Fire is a powerful discernment of the complexity and fragility of human behaviour."
Australian Book Review
"From the outset, Into the Fire is never less than riveting, compelling drama...a superbly crafted novel..."
Sydney Morning Herald / The Age
"A literary trend I’m enjoying very much is the novel focusing on the tribulations of female friendship. Think Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet; Marlena by Julie Buntin; The Burning Girl by Claire Messud and Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott..."
Readings February Book of the Month
"...what’s most intriguing about this story is the sharp commentary on gender politics, comparing our university-age selves to our mid-career selves, and the subtle power of gaslighting. Into the Fire will appeal to fans of Emily Maguire, Zoë Heller and Sofie Laguna."
Books + Publishing
"Into the Fire’s honesty in looking at often ugly behaviour, and its ability to knuckle down into the core of its characters’ complexities, make it hard to put down..."
The Saturday Paper
An "attractive, intelligent and steadfastly feminist novel..."
The Adelaide Advertiser
"Delicious, dark, smouldering — Sonia Orchard’s Into the Fire is an unflinching post-mortem of a once life-giving friendship, swirled with the doubts, guilt and shame that every woman under patriarchy recognises, lying alone in the belly of night."
Feminartsy
"A perceptive, provoking story of friendship and intimacy, which examines the conundrum where the personal and political collide. Into the Fire raises a timely question: what stories are we willing to believe about our own
and other people’s lives? I loved it."
Rosalie Ham
"In this taut and thoughtful novel, Sonia Orchard deftly steers us through the twists and turns of female friendship, love and motherhood, and past the multiple hazards of the male gaze. Into the Fire is a smart, heartbreaking and richly rewarding read."
Jacinta Halloran
"Orchard is an astute observer of long friendships, their binds, their blind loyalties, their casual betrayals. Alice, Crow and Lara will stay with me a long time."
Kristina Olsson
"A compelling and affecting novel that cuts to the heart of what it means to live a meaningful life, especially in the midst of an acutely narcissistic culture. Orchard’s portrait of her flawed, deeply human protagonist is sometimes hard to bear witness to. This is a beautifully controlled novel from a writer who shows us the power of fiction to engage both empathy and intellect. A reader can’t help but come away powerfully changed. A timely and necessary book."
Julienne van Loon
"Heartbreaking: long after the final pages, Orchard had me sifting through the embers to find what was left of friendship and loyalty. Forced to review her past through the lens of a tragedy, Orchard’s narrator is a woman wrestling with just how much blame she can apportion, and how much she herself has to shoulder."
Cassandra Austin
