The Book of Fires

October 5, 2009
Borodale’s enjoyable debut is the story of Agnes Trussel, who, in 1752, leaves the poverty-stricken countryside for London, intent on hiding her unwanted pregnancy and making a better life. On her journey, she meets Lettice Talbot, a beautiful young woman who promises to help her, but when Agnes loses track of her benefactress, she ends up as the apprentice to Mr. Blacklock, a moody pyrotechnist who is mourning his dead wife as he attempts to bring color to fireworks. Despite her difficulties with Blacklock’s other domestic staff, Agnes grows to feel at home in London and enjoys her work, but she is constantly threatened by the imminent exposure of her pregnancy and haunted by the guilt of her theft of the stash of coins that funded her trip. This menacing mood is Borodale’s greatest achievement: from the omnipresent hangings to the economic knife-edge upon which the working class lives, she builds a dark but human world that makes Agnes’s plight deeply sympathetic. When the story is neatly tied up with an unexpected resolution to Agnes’s problems, it’s surprising but not unbelievable, capping off a delightfully diverting book.

November 15, 2009
Poor, pregnant English country girl flees to London and a new life as a firework-maker's assistant.

Borodale sets her promising debut in the mid-18th century, when the enclosure of common land deprived the rural poor of their traditional rights of access and led to hunger, crime and savage punishment. Narrator Agnes Trussel, ruined after succumbing to sex with a village boy, describes herself as"a thief, a disgrace and a deserter" as she decides to forsake her impoverished family in Sussex and head for the capital with money she has stolen from a dead neighbor. The 17-year-old finds London a crowded, filthy and dangerous place, yet fortune shines on Agnes; she is taken in by Mr. Blacklock, a pyrotechnician who needs a helper with nimble fingers. The plot stalls as Agnes learns her craft and hides her condition, gaining Blacklock's respect for her intelligence and deftness while also catching the eye of a gunpowder supplier she hopes to marry as a way out of her predicament. When this plan founders, she falls back on a more dangerous scheme, but her attempts at abortion fail too. Borodale dodges one obvious ending only to opt for another that is marginally less obvious, building in tidy resolutions to issues of deceit, guilt and sacrifice en route.

Sympathetic storytelling with a hint of freshness compensates for slack pacing and excessive detail.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 29, 2010
Agnes Trussel, 17 and pregnant, leaves her home in the English countryside to try her fortunes in 1752 London, where she becomes apprenticed to a fireworks maker, Mr. Blacklock. What she does not realize is, just as she is racing against time to find a solution to her dilemma, so, too, is Mr. Blacklock for his own reasons. Dense and deeply atmospheric, this debut novel paints a vivid picture of 18th-century life, carefully detailing the smells, the grime, and the nuances of everyday interactions. Borodale's resolution to Agnes's problem is surprising but entirely possible.Verdict Evoking the feel of novels like Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, this work will captivate historical fiction fans who relish the fine details of quotidian life, but they might find it difficult to form an attachment to Agnes, who never quite lifts off the page.-Pamela P. O'Sullivan, SUNY at Brockport Lib.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2009
Borodale deftly conjures up mid-eighteenth-century London in her spectacular debut. The premise is a familiar onepregnant and unwed, an impoverished young county girl sets out for the big city desperately seeking to hide her disgracebut the story that unfolds is also a fresh and fascinating investigation into the art and the science of pyrotechnics. When fortune lands desperate Agnes Trussel on the doorstep of an embittered fireworks maker, she becomes Mr. J. Blacklocks apprentice. Teaching her the tricks of his trade, he also works feverishly on an innovative formula to infuse color into fireworks. As her condition becomes increasingly difficult to hide, a world rife with new possibilities seems to dangle just beyond her reach. In addition to her pregnancy, Agnes also harbors another shameful secret that threatens her precarious security and gnaws away at her soul. Readers who loved Jane Eyre will appreciate the atmosphere of tension and foreboding that permeates the narrative.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)