Into the Fire
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.
Praise for Into the Fire
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. - Keyvan Allahyari, Australian Book Review (2019) Read the full review
From the outset, Into the Fire is never less than riveting, compelling drama...a superbly crafted novel... - Louise Swinn, Sydney Morning Herald / The Age (2019) Read the full review
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 (2019) Read the full review
...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 and Publishing (2018) Read the full review
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 (2019) Read the full review
An "attractive, intelligent and steadfastly feminist novel..." - The Adelaide Advertiser (2019) Read the full review
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 (2019) Read the full review
Into the Fire explores what Lessing demonstrates: how even the best-intentioned women, even feminists, might fail one another simply for not appreciating the many reasons – hidden, silent, structural – that their sisters end up thwarted, or in the most tragic circumstances, dead. - Sydney Review of Books (2019) Read the full review