Description
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.
Endorsements
'A wise and heartfelt piece of writing' — The Times
'Witty' — Independent
'Wry and reflective . . . a soulful look at a life in words' — 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
'Shot through with the kind of depth and detail that can only come from a masterful writer finally turning his pen to his own life. Fresh, wise and finely-wrought' — Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam
'As charming and funny in schoolboy episodes as he is thought-provoking in the darker environs of mental health, Sebastian Faulks is always resonant, civilised and sane' — Mark Knopfler
'Faulks writes with great emotional authority' — Sunday Times
'A prodigiously talented writer' — New York Times
'Faulks is beyond doubt a master' — Financial Times
'The most impressive novelist of his generation' — Sunday Telegraph