Vintage Contemporaries / Burning Down the House

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They always celebrated important family events out of town, usually in another country. Here they were in a black car as it sped along the highway, now turning onto a side road, disappearing and emerging from under trees like a blinking light on a Global Positioning System screen moving across a continent. The tinted windows flickering with shadows and reflections, sparks dancing against the glass. From the outside, the family riding in the car was difficult to understand, the way the movements of a fire, even when viewed within the safe confines of a fireplace, seem random and uncontrolled. However, inside, from amid the licking flames of its interlocking relationships, the Zane family made its own fantastical sense. All families are complicated, but because their connections constitute the primary reality that its members know, some families create a world that to them is more comprehensible than the world itself.

From the point of view of the fire in the fireplace, the living room appears extraordinary, disorienting, and obscure. And the unexpected lashings of the blaze feel comfortable, ordinary, and known.



This time Jonathan had flown his driver over, so Vlad was taking Jonathan, Miranda, and Alix from the airstrip to the house in the same car. It was awkward for Alix because she had been conscious of the tension between her brother and his fiancée ever since they had begun their journey and they had been journeying for a long time: from New York to London, and then from London on a smaller plane, and now in this sedan, here, on a road in the British countryside lined with ancient trees whose branches and leaves so loose and careless reminded Alix of one of Jonathan s silk ties, flung casually over his shoulder as it was at this very moment. She sat next to Miranda, while Jonathan had opted to sit up front with Vlad. Alix and Jonathan had two much-­younger half brothers, nine-­year-­old twins, and Miranda had recently discovered that Jonathan was

Jane Mendelsohn is the author of three previous novels, including I Was Amelia Earhart, a New York Times best seller and a finalist for the Orange Prize; Innocence; and American Music. A graduate of Yale, she lives in New York City with her husband and children.

www.janemendelsohn.com

A powerful parable for ultra-globalized times. Vogue

Mendelsohn has written a book for the ages. . . . This is literature of the first order. Andrew Solomon, National Book Award winning author of The Noonday Demon

Powerful. . . . Thrilling. . . . There are flashes of stunning beauty. Paste
 
Oracular, dazzling. . . . Gorgeous, feverishly imaginative. Booklist (starred review)