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Not on Fire, but Burning: A Novel by [Greg Hrbek]

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Greg Hrbek

Not on Fire, but Burning: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Greg Hrbek (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Twenty-year-old Skyler saw the incident out her window: Some sort of metallic object hovering over the Golden Gate Bridge just before it collapsed and a mushroom cloud lifted above the city. Like everyone, she ran, but she couldn't outrun the radiation, with her last thoughts being of her beloved baby brother, Dorian, safe in her distant family home.

Flash forward to a post-incident America, where the country has been broken up into territories and Muslims have been herded onto the old Indian reservations in the west, even though no one has determined who set off the explosion that destroyed San Francisco. Twelve-year old Dorian dreams about killing Muslims and about his sister—even though Dorian's parents insist Skyler never existed. Are they still shell-shocked, trying to put the past behind them . . . or is something more sinister going on?

Meanwhile, across the street, Dorian's neighbor adopts a Muslim orphan from the territories. It will set off a series of increasingly terrifying incidents that will lead to either tragedy or redemption for Dorian, as he struggles to prove that his sister existed—and was killed by a terrorist attack.

Not on Fire, but Burning is unlike anything you're read before—not exactly a thriller, not exactly sci-fi, not exactly speculative fiction, but rather a brilliant and absorbing adventure into the dark heart of an America that seems ripped from the headlines. But just as powerfully, it presents a captivating hero: A young boy driven by love to seek the truth, even if it means his deepest beliefs are wrong.

Length: 274 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled	Language: English

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Review

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
An NPR Best Book of 2015
Winner of the 2016 Lascaux Prize in Fiction

"Hrbek's prose is sharp and trenchant, his voice remarkably complex yet assured, and this novel is an impressive achievement: a narrative that is changing even as it is still taking place, still being reshaped by the news, by our collective and individual memories, and by the very consequences still unfolding from the event itself."
--The New York Times

"Masterful ... A strong, suspenseful novel, rich in its language, clear eyed in its characters and propulsive in its plotting. Full of ambiguity, yet precise in its construction, "Not on Fire, But Burning" is a shining example of post-9/11, pre-next-disaster storytelling."
--The San Francisco Chronicle

"With Not on Fire, but Burning, Hrbek has crafted something audacious: A novel that operates simultaneously as apocalyptic alarmism, brain-bending quantum fiction, character-driven drama and gripping mystery. It's as poignant as it is perplexing and profound."
--NPR

"It is impossible to read Greg Hrbek's brand new speculative fiction at this moment in time without thinking about all the Facebook posts in your feed about Paris, terrorism and Muslims. Not on Fire, But Burning is simultaneously a dark look at our possible near future and a hopeful one. The book had me in tears by the end."
--CBC News

"Not on Fire, but Burning reads like a fever dream -- spectacular, seductive, eerie, and surreal...Hrbek's prose is hypnotic, his abrupt POV pivots are both dizzying and delightful, and his overarching meta-speculative style is utterly entrancing. Fans of Delillo, Atwood, or just great, innovative fiction, this one's for you."
--Buzzfeed, 5 Great Books to Read in October

"Brilliantly uncanny and read-it-under-your-desk-at-work suspenseful... You can approach the book as an allegory for the long-term aftermath of 9/11, or as a good, creepy read--it holds up beautifully on both fronts."
--GQ, 7 New Books to Celebrate the Arrival of Reading Season

"Gripping and unnerving, Not on Fire, but Burning is a brilliant critique on the prejudices and fears of the post-9/11 world."
--BuzzFeed, 19 Awesome New Books You Need To Read This Fall

"A strange and beautiful genre-busting novel about danger and memory."
--Elizabeth McCracken, Miami Herald

"As [Hrbek's] characters uneasily navigate each other and their new world, they grapple with the same issues and prejudices of our current post-9/11 instability."
--KQED, 10 Fall Books to Anticipate

"Hrbek beautifully depicts the very human longing for a better reality. In analyzing the burning angst and strife within a single human decision, Hrbek highlights the responsibility of emotion and thought in determining those decisions. We only have our very future dangling over the fire."
--PopMatters

"Like the best speculative fiction, [Hrbek's] 2038 America could serve as a warped reflection of our own time, probing post-9/11 anxieties."
--Omaha World-Herald, 8 Must-Read Books

"Brilliant . . . It's troubling and beautiful, bold and compelling, a brainy, heartfelt page-turner"
--Elizabeth McCracken

"Not On Fire, but Burning is a mystery, a thriller, a sharp critique of contemporary culture, and an explosive family drama all in one. Hrbek gives us that greatest of literary gifts: the inability to do anything but keep turning pages."
--Ron Currie, Jr., author of Everything Mattters

"Audacious, masterful, fresh, and compelling. I couldn't stop reading, and I couldn't stop questioning what I knew."
--V. V. Ganeshananthan, author of Love Marriage

"Hrbek...may be poised to be the next indie breakout."
--The Millions, Most Anticipated Books of 2015

"[Hrbek's] engagement with themes of loss and recovery and his vibrantly lyrical prose style reach a peak in this dark, allusive fantasy, which seems intended as a metaphor for the anxieties still lurking in our post-9/11 universe."
--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"A profound cautionary tale, a vivid and often deeply unnerving reminder that our choices carry real and lasting consequences."
--Publishers Weekly

"Hrbek delivers a captivating story filled with nuance. Every chapter brings a surprise, and Hrbek has real knack for stunning, unforgettable images and turns of phrase. Not on Fire, But Burning boldly questions America's moral standing since 9/11, and brings to life the horrific consequences of ignorance, fear and hate."
--Bookpage

Praise for The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly

"Provocative . . . Hrbek writes with an appealing lyricism, and he knows how to deliver a bravura scene."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Irresistible."
--The Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Sensuous prose and vital characters . . . magnetic, difficult, strange and well worth the read."
--Publishers Weekly

"Subtle, inventive, moving."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A compelling story of obsessed passion."
--San Francisco Examiner --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

"GREG HRBEK won the James Jones First Novel award for his book The Hindenberg Crashes Nightly. His short fiction has appeared in Harper s Magazine and numerous literary journals, and in The Best American Short Stories anthology. He is writer in residence at Skidmore College." --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN : B00TCI4SAE
Publisher : Melville House (29 September 2015)
Language : English
File size : 3346 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 274 pages
Page numbers source ISBN : 1612194532

Best Sellers Rank: 1,478,374 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 6,481 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction
- 6,856 in Dystopian Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- 9,302 in Dystopian Fiction

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33 ratings

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Top review from Australia

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jamie Dyson

Boring

Reviewed in Australia on 8 October 2015

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Couldn't keep track of story, hard to follow,
I didn't feel anything for the characters,
Totally disappointed, i don't know why this book got such a good rating

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Rebekah

Beautifully written

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 October 2015

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I'm not sure how I feel about this novel. For a few days I had no idea what to rate Not on Fire, but Burning. I'm not 100% sure I know how I feel even now. There's so much in so few pages and I have so many questions that weren't answered, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I feel like there's so many important discussions that were started in this novel; extremists, religion, terrorism, the way kids blindly follow what they're told by their peers, how countries handle it all. I know I'll be thinking about this for a while, and I might read it again to see if that helps me to gather my thoughts.

I will say this: the prose in this novel is beautiful. It's very lyrical and it switches between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person seamlessly, as well as between perspectives. I felt like every time I was confused it was intentional on Hrbek's part. Like he wanted me to be thinking, he wanting to start a discussion or train of thought.

The only thing I disliked was the amount of talk of parallel worlds. Here's the thing: it would have been fine to play around with what ifs and what Dorian and Skylar and the rest of their family might be doing in another world. The bits of maths threw me off a bit, and I didn't understand any of it so if that was meant to impact me in any way it was wasted on me. The whole parallel dimensions thing just got a bit meh for me by the end.

Overall this was a thought provoking, beautifully written novel. It was by no means a great novel, but definitely a good one. I'll definitely be giving this some thought and a reread in the future.

2 people found this helpful

Alysson Oliveira

É o fim do mundo – mas de qual deles?

Reviewed in Brazil on 14 January 2017

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O subgênero do apocalipse beira a saturação porque praticamente todos os romances – até os bons – seguem mais ou menos a mesma cartilha, com poucas variações. Quando aparece algo como NOT ON FIRE BUT BURNING, de Greg Hrbek, é algo a se comemorar. Embora cumpra, de certa forma, com as obrigações do fim do mundo moldado pela literatura recente, o americano traz uma delicada subversão que coloca seu livro uns degraus acima da maioria.

A trama começa com um objeto – um corpo celeste, um avião, terroristas, uma nave alienígena? – atingindo a famosa ponte em San Francisco, o que a faz derreter, e partir daí o caos é instalado. Descobrimos tudo isso pelo olhar de uma jovem babá, Skyler, que trabalha para pagar os estudos – sua família mora em outra cidade – e precisa salvar a vida do garoto de 5 anos de está tomando conta. Poucas páginas depois, nada deu certo, e o primeiro capítulo apresenta os Estados Unidos, anos depois, diante de uma nova ordem interna e externa.

Por enquanto, ponto de vista passa a ser de Dorian, garoto de 11 anos, irmão da babá do começo, que tinha apenas 3 quando o 8-11 (assim que ficou conhecido o dia fatídico). Ele é assombrado por sonhos de uma irmã de quem nenhum membro de sua família recorda. O que aconteceu que todos apagaram as lembranças de Skyler? Ou ela é um delírio do garoto? É uma ruptura no centro dessa narrativa que intriga por muito tempo – os personagens e o leitor. Ao mesmo tempo, Dorian precisa lidar com sua xenofobia – ele já foi pego pichando uma mesquita – quando seu vizinho adota um órfão árabe, e quer que todas outras crianças fiquem amigas dele.

Depois de, certa forma, apresentar a narrativa e os personagens, Hrbek faz os motores da narrativa se mexerem sem parar, transitando a voz narrativa entre 1a, 2a e 3a pessoa; e o tempo entre presente, passado e futuro. Não apenas isso, o espaço e o tempo começam a se alterar, e uma vez que as contas (das idades de Dorian e Skyler) não somam direito, percebemos estar diante de duas realidades. Mas são dois mundos? Uma fratura nesse? Realidades paralelas? É uma audácia do autor, que funciona bem na maior parte do tempo – embora talvez se explique demais em alguns momentos.

O autor combina um drama familiar, com estudo de personagens, com um mistério envolvendo física e questões políticas, tudo emoldurado numa linguagem poética e no desafio de combinar a ficção com a ciência, sem alienar seu leitor.

O título – que pode ser inspirado no poema “Not waving but drowning”, de Steven Smith – aponta para a discrepância entre aparência e essência, entre o que se vê e o que está acontecendo realmente. Mas, no fundo, também não há uma única interpretação ao que se vê, pois cada um vê de seu próprio ponto de vista. Por isso mesmo, o fim não é o mesmo para todas as pessoas. Para algumas, nem é mesmo o fim.

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Tom at Amazon

Theoretical Physics and the Novel, Some Thoughts

Reviewed in the United States on 2 January 2016

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There is an aspect of this novel that is worth thinking about, namely the references to a "grid" and "quantum." First, the grid may be in reference to the space-time diagrams used in physics where the x-axis is time and the y-axis is space (simplified to one dimension). An event is a trajectory in this space whether it refers to the movement of a car, a comet or a galaxy or, for that matter, a person or even a person's entire life. Second, the reference to quantum may link to the interpretation problem in quantum mechanics. There is a probabilistic aspect to QM and, for the sake of interpretation in regard to a conceptual problem (not discussed by me here), some but my no means all QM theorists postulate that all the possible values of a quantity (each with its probability in a distribution) "happen" rather than only the one that in some conventional sense is "observed." In other words, each possible path is actually taken rather than just one. So for instance, the probability distribution over the possible events in San Francisco at a certain point in time yields the explosion (observed by Skyler) but also other events such as -- there was no explosion. And so forth. I admit that the fit to the author's usage is not perfect. The no-explosion path (really an infinite number of paths) is said to be "parallel" to the explosion path and for the author is idenfified with a line parallel to the t-axis, as I understand him. In any case, I have studied QM but am not a physicist. If there is a reader who is a physicist it would be nice to get his reaction to the quasi-formalism used in the book as well as the entirety of the seeming QM interpretation that author seems to use, namely the Many Worlds Interpretation.

2 people found this helpful

switterbug/Betsey Van Horn

"Like something cosmic come at high speed through the atmosphere..."

Reviewed in the United States on 7 November 2015

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There’s a whiff here of the post 9/11 novel. An attack. Islamophobia. Hatred. Fear of the future, and hardliners taking positions. But Hrbek, perhaps inspired by that genre of books, created a more unconventional novel—part speculative fiction, part dystopia, thriller, particles of sci-fi, cautionary tale, family drama, and part scrutiny of social bias. It’s an ambitious novel that alternates between characters, and in different realms of time—or networks of time, while also occurring in a narrow period of eight years. It’s an examination of people who attempt to reconcile their principles with their fears, and how memories play an important part of their convictions, but may not be what they seem. Moreover, it demonstrates how hatred is a toxin that spreads to future generations.

The prelude opens with an attack of unknown source and composition on the Golden Gate Bridge on 8/11/2030, “something, metal or fire or a bolt of electromagnetism.” Young college student Skyler Wakefield is babysitting when it happens, while her family is tucked safely and distantly away from the resulting mushroom cloud and radiation. The reader can’t be sure of her fate, but we know that her mind is on her three-year-old brother, Dorian.

Fast-forward eight years later, a very different America, whose borders have changed into provinces and territories, due to the nuclear fallout. Although nothing has been substantiated about the cause of the 8/11 attack, the official story blames radical Islam terrorists. All Muslims have been corralled into ghetto-like camps, isolated from the rest of the country, just like the Americans did to the Japanese seventy years ago. They have been categorically demonized, although some progressive people are sympathetic to their plight.

Meanwhile, Dorian, now almost twelve, is having dreams about a sister, Skyler, who he doesn’t actually remember, but is ever-present in a nighttime fever of clairvoyance. His parents state that they have no memory of a daughter, and are disturbed by Dorian’s insistence that she existed. The widespread blame on Muslims for 8/11 fuels Dorian’s suspicion and naïve hatred of them, as he connects them to the fate of his sister. Does she exist? Hberk deftly structures the book so that even the reader is questioning whether Skyler was real. Or, perhaps she exists in a different sphere of time, as promoted by a keen, long-haired outlier. Are his parents lying to him?

Meanwhile, the Wakefield’s 71 year-old neighbor, who fought in all Gulf Wars (most recently Gulf War III), has just legally adopted eleven-year-old Karim from one of the camps. Karim’s parents were killed in an American drone strike, which leaves him ripe for hatred against “infidels.” His presence in the neighborhood causes a stir and escalation of convictions, and an incident that unleashes extremes of behavior, and in some cases, potential heroism.

The novel achieves a great resonance of feeling, but its breadth, which came on hard and fast toward the end, also obfuscated some of the key questions it raised, or dropped them altogether. Some ideas used shallow treatment, and the portrait of Muslim characters mostly lacked nuance. Dorian and Karim emerge as the main characters, and it is their actions and interior monologues that give it pace throughout the shifting perspectives.

Much of the narrative is stream-of-consciousness, which was periodically repetitive, and could have been sharpened to a finer point. However, at times, such as with this quote, it accentuated the enigma of humanity.

“What we have presented here is a fraction of the whole, no more representative of the total narrative than a single cell is representative of the living body of a person, just as every person described herein is, in like manner, a fraction of a whole of greater selves.”

I enjoyed it for its intriguing enterprise and imagination, as well as giving us a window into a community, and how its empathy, enmity, fears, fractiousness, and convictions are built. Additionally, the story illuminates that history and memory are intertwined, and that all our actions build on previous actions, affect each other, and have consequences.

4 people found this helpful

SpecialK

Loved this book

Reviewed in the United States on 26 October 2015

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Loved this book! It is a cautionary tale that reminds us all that we can make a huge impact on the rising conflict between people. The conflict depicted in the book is with Muslims but it also serves as a metaphor for the prejudice we have against those not like us. I enjoyed the way in which Hrbek gives us possible paths throughout the book to illustrate that we make choices everyday that lead to different outcomes which can dramatically effect the future. Although the story can seem bleak at times, I appreciated the message of hope at the end. I would also people to check out this amazing organization which is doing the work Hrbek writes about: http://www.seedsofpeace.org/

4 people found this helpful

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