The Great Fire Compendium

Passages

Page 19: "The lawyers were paid. The true marriage, indissoluble, was simply the moment when they sat on the rented bed and grieved for a fatality older than love." I sat with this sentence for a long while. Just an incredible sentiment, and particularly for these characters who seem to be so rigid in their properness and find thought exercises to be their greatest emotional outlets, this was a clearly distinct moment of simple, true evocation of emotion.

Page 70: "On his cot at the barracks Exley realized how much of his soldiering had been spent flat on his back, waiting for war. War had provided a semblance of purpose, reinforced by danger. Danger had been switched off like a stage light, leaving the drab scenery. And there they were at the barracks, he and Rysom, two years into peace and bored to death by it. Each must scratch around now for some kind of compromise and call it destiny." I love this idea of forcing destiny into a life where the mundane no longer feels worthy of the effort, and of the fact that this thing (the ending of war) that is supposed to be joyful is actually the precursor to creating unhappiness and boredom out of the rest of their lives.

Page 146: "When we're indecisive, yes, the wishes of others gain. If that had never drastically been the case in Leith's life, he'd felt the lash of it in small things. There can be danger in supplying what people say they want: they may have got used to the inaccessibility of long desires, shaped their lives otherwise, even want the grievance of being thwarted. On the other hand, a gesture might give great happiness." A large part of this book seems to be about struggling to make decisions and to realize what exactly our characters (and people in general) think about the world around them as they're discovering it to be a fairly complicated place. This is just another great example of the oscillation that so often takes place from paragraph to paragraph.

Techniques

There's an awful lot implied, especially early, left implicit rather than being explained, and rather than larger thematic or emotional connections, these are often simple explanatory pieces, even down to who's talking at what moment or character's names. Hazzard seems to be dancing right on the edge of frustration, at least for me, a few times, but somehow never crosses over -- rather, I'm straining and being pushed to make associations and connections for myself that I'm used to being handed to me. This took a few pages to acclimate to, but it forced me to read slightly closer than my normal tendency, and it leaves me thinking that the book will have larger elements also requiring me to exercise these same connective deductions.

Page 12: "She thought his eyes, well, beautiful." An interesting slip (purposefully, I mean) out of our third person limited perspective of Major Leith and into the third person limited of a seemingly-minor character. I'm not sure what to do with this, as of yet -- does it perhaps suggest, against any logic I can find, that she's a larger character, or is it simply a way to point out that this guy is a true American hero, even down to the sensitive eyes? -- but I read this paragraph twice before I realized how strange a move it was. The line flows incredibly well as we're in this sort of transitionary moment going from a clear scene with dialogue into a paragraph that propels him forward quickly.

Leith, whose head we're in so closely as to see his thoughts on occasion, is also often referred to as "The man," instead of by name. This technique, along with the occasional need to puzzle out who's speaking or even, sometimes whether we're in the narrator's head or Leiths's, all contribute to an oscillating sense of distance that seems to be exactly what Leith is going for -- he seems to be a people-pleaser, a charmer, and yet never ever gets fully inside him, and the narration is following along with this character trait.

Page 27: "Throughout the coming months of their acquaintance, Captain Dench never did look Major Leith in the eye." Jumping into the future while keeping the writing in past tense. And for such a seemingly minor detail.

Page 35: "If he were minded to feel homesick, it would have been for that." Narrator lying to himself, but in such a way that the lie is immediately apparent to the reader.

Page 55: "It occurred to Lieth for the first time that the red child, then, was the age of his own dead sister; that this had been his mother's thought as she listened that day in the ascending lift, and had moved her consider the future of her small surviving son--whose life had been, thereafter, shaped by the moment." So much happening so quickly: Helen makes a connection about the Chinese girl's age, that thought then leading Leith to connect thoughts in such a way as to realize for the first time how his mother's thoughts had been twisted in a certain moment. So many amazing layers so quickly.

Page 231: "Truthfulness was his last whole good, the thing he had not sheltered or kept small for safety. He had brought it out of the fire, not intact but with appropriate scars. As an abstraction it could not help him, lying inert in the Asian afternoon. Whether it retained any private power remained to be seen." Just absolutely beautiful, especially while considering the paragraphs before that are suggesting that there is no right answer in this situation, that all defenses that have been set up against this very situation have somehow failed. And here is all that is left.

Words

Impecunious

Saxifrage

Augury

Splenetic

Rayon

Patina

Teak

Alluvial

Cairn

Marzipan

Cenotaph

Stories/lines/ideas to steal/attempt

Page 10: "But it matters to have something to tell."

            "In the pattern of disruption…arrival had kept its interest." I don't like the entirety of this sentence, but the idea of one thing to hold onto -- there's a way to turn that into something I can use.

Page 23: "This time yesterday I hadn't met him. Today he's dead, and I'm his only mourner."

Page 31: "Why did you walk across China?" Dialogue introducing a subject we hadn't known before, a reason that Leith is talked about in such reverence, but also blunt, forceful, and not in any way expected dialogue from what I've seen while still being entirely in character.

Page 33: "'You see the likeness. Everyone does.' She meant, To herself." Interpreting, and interpreting wrongly, funneled to readers' understanding by narrator's curating.

Page 34: "Since love, like influenza, leaves a huskiness."

Page 41: "…sparse details filmed over by the fine wire netting that gave them the significance of a composition, a context for the girl on the bed."

Page 50: "It is incompleteness that haunts us."

Page 68: "He was aware of some consequential element that he had not identified. And with indifference realized it was beauty."

Page 72: "Here…Peter Exley explored a heap of files and despaired of justice."

Page 101: "'If I'd done it, she'd be alive.' He said, in a voice they had not heard, 'She was shot.'"

Page 114: "After wartime escapes, he'd expected better of peace."

Page 156: "It was fresh and strange to him, that by merely arriving in that obscure place he could create such pleasure, in others and in himself."

Page 158: "…just the age of the century…"

Page 171: "…but she had observed the cold process of what men call coming to their senses."

Page 187: "…seeking her right to a complex notion."