Anita Shreve at her best.
A slow burning novel about a loveless marriage set in post war America and the consequences of a wildfire that decimated the coast of Maine in 1947 and robbed the wife Gracie of everything.
It deals with how Gracie fights against all odds even a domineering husband to protect her family even though society stigmatises single parent families.
Fantastic book would recommend anyone to read it.

It has been a while since I read a book by Anita Shreve for some reason but I enjoyed this book just as much as her previous novels. Inspired by a devastating wild fire which swept through Maine in 1947, The Stars Are Fire tells the story of young wife Grace and how she and her family cope in the aftermath of the fire. Grace is married to Gene and it’s not a particularly happy marriage. Gene is prone to mood swings and does not show much love or affection towards his wife. They have two children, Claire and Tom, and Grace is pregnant with their third child when the fire strikes leaving her with no possessions, no home and, as Gene has not returned from fighting the fire, effectively a single parent.

What I really enjoy about Anita Shreve’s books is that although they may initially appear relatively straightforward, she brings great depth to her characters and especially to their emotions. You quickly become invested in their lives and concerned for their well-being. Although put in a really difficult position when on her own with her family, Grace in fact proves herself to have great resourcefulness and resilience. It was heartening to see her drawing on her inner strength, strength she probably didn’t realise that she had. “Don’t worry about me, Mother. I’ve discovered, ever since the fire, or maybe more recently, that I have inner resources I can count on.” When she has a chance at happiness, I was so pleased for her as she certainly deserved it Yet that time of happiness was so brief, would it be enough to sustain her through the extremely testing times that followed? I really wanted Grace to have the chance to break free and have the happiness she so deserved. Without giving anything away, I liked that the ending had a hint of optimism for many of the characters, yet everything wasn’t completely wrapped up neatly. The reader had to make up their own mind to a certain extent about just how life would work out for everyone.

I felt that Grace’s life very much reflected the classical music she so loved “what strikes her now is how tumultuous the piece is, how often that tumult is followed by moments of quiet. It’s the combination that creates the beauty.” It is these times of tumult and moments of quiet throughout Grace’s story which make this such a wonderful book to read.

I want to say up front that I don't usually read books like this, so this was a pleasant surprise for me. It tells the story of Grace, a young married woman living in Maine with her husband, Gene and her two young children in the late 1940s. The novel focuses on the minutiae of life in a small town, which is gentle and moderately paced. Following a massive fire that sweeps through the town, we see Grace as she tries to make sense of the changes in her life. I found this quite an interesting read. There were passages that irritated me immensely, but then there were parts which I found genuinely uplifting and inspiring. Throughout we see how women at the time were consistently underestimated, by both men and women and the steps some women took to combat this as best they could. I found that the plot was pretty predictable, particularly towards the end and that the villain of the piece was ridiculously villainous for no discernible reason. Having said that, I would definitely read future offerings by Shreve, if only for a momentary and superficial escape into a more gentle world.

I received this as an advance copy for review via netgalley.
I loved this book. I took a while to settle into the writing style but once I got going I read it in a sitting. It is set in the post war 1940s in New England and tells the story of Grace and her life there.
Living in coastal Maine at the time of the 1947 fire, her life which had been pretty basic to start with, is suddenly torn up when she loses everything. The telling of the fire, of her survival and her care of her children in the following months is gripping. The period is well described with sufficient reminders of what life was like in a fairly poor American small town.
Gradually Grace puts a new life together but just as things get settled a new turmoil sets her back to square one. Anita Shreve has created a convincing and generally likeable cast of characters, a believable and moving situation and woven a great story. Highly recommended.

I have been reading Anita Shreve’s work for years, and she never lets me down.
Having just finished this book, I feel bereft, as though I have left behind a group of friends. The characters lived with me even when I wasn’t reading. This author makes the writing feel effortless and easy, the plot flows naturally, with her thoughtful descriptions..
Her characters are interesting and rounded, the story, although it starts dramatically, also has gentle moments which are heartfelt and full of love, followed by others which force the reader to confront- what would I do in the same situation?.
An historically accurate devastating fire, resulting in the destruction of a community, becomes a metaphor for events throughout the book This is a clever, sensitive, fascinating novel-, and as for the ending...I didn’t see it coming.Loved it, and am already recommending it to people.

Another masterful novel from Anita Shreve. Set in 1947 in her favourite location, Maine, it tells the story of Grace who loses everything in a cataclysmic fire but with the help of her mother and neighbours goes on to rise from the ashes like a Phoenix.

I enjoyed reading this from the first line to the end. It is a proper, grown-up, well-written and engrossing story with prose and dialogue that flows and characters that live long in the imagination. The first part of the book involves a terrible natural disaster that happened in real life when fires destroyed most of the coast of Maine in 1947. Grace Holland is pregnant with 2 very small children and her husband goes to try to help fire-fight. She is left to save her little family from certain death and finds herself with nothing in the world but her life and her 2 children. Her husband is missing presumed dead. Grace's journey to establish a life again brings her opportunities she didn't know existed, joys she had never experienced before and challenges to stretch her. I will strongly recommend this book to anyone who gives me eye contact. I'd forgotten just how good Anita Shreve is, and this is certainly one of her best.

What a wonderful book! It really got under my skin. I'll be buying it for all my friends and recommending it widely!

In October 1947, the biggest fires in Maine's history swept though the state burning for two weeks and destroying over 12oo homes and holiday houses. With this as backdrop, Anita Shreve has crafted her story of Grace Holland, a wife and mother of two, caught up in the fires and spat out to reinvent herself in the aftermath. Before the fires, Grace was a typical woman of her times, rearing her children in a tiny cottage, cooking and washing for her husband in a loveless marriage. Her best friend Rosie lived next door and each day they would take time out to enjoy each others company while their children played together. After the horrendous day of the fire when Grace and Rosie were forced to take their children into the ocean to survive, Grace waits for her husband to return from fire fighting and wonders how they will cope now that they are homeless and penniless.

Anita Shreve has painted Grace as a fierce survivor, a women who will adapt and cope with whatever adversity life throws in her way to keep her children safe. Along the way she discovers her own strength and bravery and learns what it is to really love another. A beautiful story of rebirth in the aftermath of catastrophic fires.

The Stars Are Fire is a wonderfully written, touching story of life during the post-war 1940's, and how traumatic events can either make or break someone.
I really liked the main character, Grace, who is a strong and likeable woman. Her married life is not unhappy, as such, but she feels like something is missing between them. She's not completely happy, but happy enough, until...

The fire that rips through their house (and almost kills her and her children) seems to have taken husband Gene with it, in some way. His absence (or perhaps death?) leaves Grace without a husband and her children without a father, but without the ability to properly grieve for him, because his body is missing.

Gene can be mean, spiteful and quite nasty at times - but he has been through hell, and Grace herself wrestles with feeling hatred towards him and pity for what he has - and is - going through. Grace is such a great character and I really enjoyed reading about her, willing her to stand up to her husband.

The story is not action-packed; I'd describe it as a bit of a slow burner but without leaving me feeling bored or uninterested. It's a story that feels real, and could be someone's life. There's no unnecessary drama or ridiculous occurrences - what happens no doubt reflects life for many women at that time, plus the fire in Maine did really happen. You feel as if you're really getting a glimpse into women's lives during that time, and the constraints and expectations they faced from all angles.
The Stars Are Fire is sad and poignant at times, whilst at others there are real hints of hope and optimism - mirroring the ups and downs that many feel in their lives. This is definitely a story more about characters and their feats of strength or despair, rather than just about a chain of events.

There's a strong element of love - and at times, a lack of love - to the story, which I really enjoyed reading about - romance is not a single genre I read a lot of, but Anita Shreve has created something touching and really absorbing here without any of the cheesiness that I sometimes expect from the genre.

The descriptions are vivid and the writing is beautiful, making this a slow but satisfying story.- and something a little different for me. Recommended.

A really wonderful book that I enjoyed from start to finish. I loved the character of Grace and her strength shined through the whole novel. I thought the horrific nature of the fires were well presented, but it was interesting how Grace used the awful situation to her advantage in some ways. A really excellent read that I would highly recommend.
A full review will appear on ahouseofbooks.wordpress.com as part of the blog tour later this month.

I’ve always enjoyed Anita Shreve’s books. They’re always intense analyses of human relationships with all their awkwardness and secrets. She never needs many words to paint the most beautiful pictures.
The Stars Are Fire tells the story of Grace who’s starting to realise she’s not happy in her marriage. When her husband disappears and she loses everything she has in a forest fire, she realises that there’s more to life than her unhappy marriage.
In the first part of the book Shreve sets up Grace’s life beautifully, although I didn’t get as much of a feel for Gene as I would’ve liked. Since there is little action, the story moves very slowly, and even too slowly in some parts. The fire doesn’t only bring life to Grace but also to the book. I enjoyed finding out how she was coping with the situation, and how much bigger her life became. It was my favourite part of the book. The last part of the book deals with the time after her husband returns. Again, I had trouble connecting to him. I didn’t quite understand his dark moods and it almost seemed as if Grace and her mother were overreacting. I also had trouble believing the details around his return.
I enjoyed this book, but not as much as some of Shreve’s other books. I don’t think we got to see enough of the relationship between Grace and Gene to fully understand it. And as that’s the core story of the book, I feel a little disappointed. 3 stars.

Anita Shreve is on form with this novel about Grace, a young, unhappily married woman living in Maine after the second world war. Fires are sweeping New England and reach Grace's small town on the coast. The fire devastates the community and has long-reaching implications for Grace and her family. This is a beautifully written novel about marriage, fulfillment and family. The account of the fire (based on truth) is heart-stoppingly terrifying and vivid; it provides a powerful framework for this thoughtful novel.

I really wanted to like The Stars are Fire, Anita Shreve’s latest book. However, I don’t think it’s one of her best books and I’m not keen on the cover, which I think does not represent the story.

It begins well, describing the continuous wet spring when it seemed the rain would never stop and Grace Holland prays for a dry day. She’s in a difficult marriage, with her two young children, both under the age of two and pregnant with her third child. They live in a shingled bungalow two blocks in from the ocean in Hunts Beach (a fictional town) on the coast of Maine. The rain is followed by the long hot summer of 1947, then a drought sets in, followed by devastating fires. The Stars are Fire paints a convincing picture of life just after the Second World War. Grace’s daily life is difficult constrained by the social conventions and attitudes of the late 1940s.

The fires are getting closer to Hunts Beach when Gene, Grace’s husband joins the volunteers trying to bring the fires under control and she is left alone with the children. Grace’s strength and ingenuity is tested as she and her children survive the fire only to find that everything around her has gone – all the houses, her best friend and neighbour; those who have survived are leaving and her husband is missing. She has nothing.

Grace, however, is resilient and resourceful. Helped by her mother and strangers she begins to build a new life, finds work and experiences a freedom she had never known before. But then it all changes. I don’t want to write any more as I don’t want to give away any spoilers.

The Stars are Fire is easy reading and I finish it in one day. It is written from Grace’s perspective and in the present tense, which I often find irritating. But it is a page-turner and I did want to know what happened next. I didn’t enjoy the second half of the book as much as the first. And I think the ending rather trite. It’s a book about loss and grief, about how people’s lives can be changed in an instance and how they react and face up to emotional and physical challenges.

My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a proof copy of this book.

Anita Shreve writes the most brilliant slow-burning, page-turning fiction and The Stars Are Fire is Shreve at her best. It's the story of mother-of-two Grace Holland and her bullying husband, Gene, whose conventional small town lifestyles disappear in smoke amongst the raging fire of 1947, which ripped along the Maine coast following a summer-long drought. With her home gone, surviving is difficult for Grace, but with the help of her mother, Marjorie, she forges a new and better life for herself. I particularly enjoyed the relationship between Grace and Marjorie - a prickly one before the disaster, but one that shows the strength of it's bonds when Marjorie steps up to help Grace and her children, revealing a new loving closeness between mother and daughter. Just like the wild fire, The Stars are Fire builds with a fierce intensity - making it hard to put down. I'm an enormous fan of Shreve's writing and am thrilled to have discovered a new favourite!

I loved this story of Grace and her children. Grace is such a strong woman. She overcomes a terrible disaster, saving her children and her friend Rosie and her children, when a terrible fire rages through her town making her homeless. With nothing left she manages to create a new life for herself and her children. Just when things are getting better disaster strikes again.
Anita Shreves writing made Grace come alive for me, I felt I knew her and I wanted her life to come right again.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

The Stars Are Fire explores how Grace Holland's life is turned upside down following the catastrophic fires of Maine, 1947. Despite 2 young children and a third on the way, young Grace is stuck in a loveless marriage. When her husband Gene is unaccounted for after the blaze, it sets of a chain of events that will change Grace's life forever.

Anita Shreve paints a vivid picture of the historical setting, however the writing never builds on the real life events that it is set around as the plot is very predictable and the characters not developed well enough. Overall it is an easy, if at times distressing, read but could've been so much better.

I knew nothing about the fires in Maine and was fascinated to learn about how devastating they were. I really enjoyed this book, not having read any of Anita Shreve's books before. It was easy to read and the characters were believable. I love a happy ending!

Thanks to Net Galley & Little Brown for an ARC of this book in exchange for a review. A lovely read of couraage and determination.
A long hot summer, drought, then a raging fire which consumes everything, homes, belongings, everything black and charred. Following the fire Grace's husband is missing, Grace has lost their 3rd child which she was carrying, homeless, no clothes, everything destroyed by the fire.
Strangers help while Grace recovers, she is reunited with her mother and Grace decides to take over her recently deceased mother in laws house - after all it has been left to her husband Gene.
There is already an occupant at the house and Grace let's him remain as a lodger as he fills the dark gloomy house with music which makes her feel alive. They. become close before he leaves to join an orchestra.
Grace has great determination, finds a job, buys a car and is able to support her mother and children, The dark house starts to feel lighter, until her husband Gene turns up, badly burned from the fire, needing full time care, Grace must give up the life she had started to build for herself and the children. Gene is filled with resentment and makes all of their lives miserable and Grace is afraid for herself and her children and begins to make plans to escape.