I received an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Quercus Books, and the author Daniel Krien.
A vividly written story covering the course of three weeks of an ordinary family's lives, with the petty drama, tribulations and relationships told in clear detail. Quiet but affecting, 3.5 stars rounded up.

This is a quiet, well written novel about a middle aged couple, Rahel and Peter. They’ve been together a long time and their relationship is going through a bad patch. It’s mainly a family story but looks at the differences between the generations, upbringings, expectations, relationships, parenting, society, history, depression and more. It was an interesting and enjoyable read for me.

Following a couple over the span of 3 weeks, on holiday at a family home, with their relationship on tenterhooks and added family pressures. How will they navigate their relationship given the intrusion of outside factors that can't be controlled.
This was an enjoyable read, best consumed in one to two sittings.

This is a very gentle book which unfolds over a short time frame but at the same time is very deep and covers a lot of interesting topics.
My main interest was in how the people of around my age who lived in East Germany both before and after the Wall fell and then how their children see this same change in status.
I was less interested in the attempt at debate on pronoun use and thought this was handled a little clumsily but I really hope more of Krien's work is translated

The couple in this novel are dealing with the challenges of mid-life that many of us face and the author handles this with compassion, subtlety and a gentle humour. There isn't a great deal of plot but the insights into the lives of these two people and their extended family and friends is portrayed with a simple prose and is thoroughly enjoyable.
After finishing The Fire I was delighted to find an unread copy of this author's previous book on my bookshelves.
My thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for this advanced review copy.

Really liked Love in Five Acts so was excited to start this one, but unfortunately I couldn’t connect to Rahel or her circle of friends and family.

I'm yet to read love in five acts but I really enjoyed this one so I will be bumping it up my to be read list. Rahel and Peter spend their holidays on an isolated farm. With grown up children who have left home it is an adjustment for them to be spending so much time in each other's company.

I read this book in a couple of hours yesterday afternoon sitting in the garden. Every now and then the planets align and you read the perfect book that matches your mood, the time of year and the location you're in when reading, this was my experience reading The Fire. I read and loved Love In Five Acts by this author and it was a pleasure to read her beautiful introspective prose again.

The Fire is the story of Rahel and Peter. They have been married for years and their children are now adults.. The cabin where they planned to spend their summer vacation is destroyed in a fire and the couple find themselves making last minute plans to spend three weeks in an isolated farmhouse where Rahel spent many summers as a child. Now without the distraction of their everyday life in Dresden, their busy careers, their children, they find themselves alone with only some animals and each other for company. They can no longer avoid the distance that has grown in their relationship, the quiet allows for an exploration of their marriage and what their future might look like.

I really loved this. A book about a middle aged couple on an isolated farm in the German countryside surprised me in how utterly captivating it was. I was immediately pulled into their story. The book is written with sympathy and understanding of each person's position. Their past, their conflicting desires and hopes for what the future looked like for them, their relationship with their children and what happens to two people when the passion and urgency dissipates. This was a really thought provoking and engaging read and I loved how German it was, the setting, the references to Germany's past and how intrinsically woven that past still is in life today and the descriptions of the weather, the food and environment, it added such a strong sense of place and it was like a brief holiday to the German countryside when reading.

This one won't be for everyone but if you enjoy character driven novels and being transported to other countries when reading, like me, you will love this.

A gorgeous read.

4.5

Author of Love in Five Acts, this is Daniela Krien's new novel. Set in Germany, it is a story about a mid-life marriage in crisis. Rahel is a 50 something psychotherapist and her husband Peter, a college professor of literature. They are spending three weeks on holidays minding a friend's home, in a rural farmhouse. A distance has grown between Rahel and Peter in recent times. Rahel uses the holiday as an opportunity to ponder the state of her marriage, desire, family and commitment. If you appreciate pared back, introspective, character driven fiction, you will enjoy this short read. Many thanks to @quercusbooksk for the arc in return for my honest review. .

I enjoyed this quietly unsettling novel about a married couple vacationing, by accident, at a friends home. The minutiae of their life is examined and unfortunately reveals so much about a marriage which has become stale.

What I love about German novels is the thinly concealed ruminations on the 20th century and its spectre, so inseparable does this still seem from contemporary German life. In a century eager to forget its predecessor, there is something hopeful in the continued contemplation of a scarred and often ugly past.

I read Daniela Krein’s The Fire in parallel with Tony Judt’s essays on the 20th century, and the two almost seemed to be in conversation. In the former - ‘But the trauma that plagues all of their lives is ebbing. From generation to generation it loses potency. And as for Simon and Selma, the conditions they grew up in were almost ideal.’ In the latter, - ‘The paradox is that the very success of the welfare states, in providing the social stability and ideological demobilization which made possible the prosperity of the past half century, has led a younger political generation to take that same quiescence for granted…We have forgotten how to think politically.’

This novella is set over three weeks in the countryside. Rahel and her husband Peter are in their early 50s, navigating a frost that has entered their marriage, confronting the ways they have helped and harmed their grown-up children, and dealing with the discomfort of a world that is no longer quite their own. The first two are handled beautifully, with all its messiness and ambiguity; theirs is a relationship that has endured on the basis of respect and the meeting of minds, and the shift into loving companionship in middle-age pains Rahel. She loves her son without complications, and is distant from her daughter both because of their differences and her shame about parenting choices; but it is her daughter who consoles her in her grief. I found the third topic thoughtful but less compelling - whilst justified in its observations on the self-indulgence of our age, there was a ring of the old fogey’s whinging about youth.

#TheFire #DanielaKrein

Daniela Krien’s previous novel Love in Five Acts brings five women into the fore, each of whom grapples with the modern problems surrounding them spanning from growing up in a dysfunctional family, living under a patriarchal household, the loneliness that ensues from an inability to form meaningful relationships with other people, and the intergenerational struggle posed by the German reunification for people growing up in East Germany. In her latest novel, which is also translated by Jamie Bulloch, Daniela Krien still writes about similar experiences, albeit now zooming in on one character, Rahel, and analyse her relationship with her husband Peter.

Both protagonists are well into their 50s, not young but not too old. Like most old couples, their love for each other has faded, with them staying together more for practical reasons rather than following their passions. Yet both are still together also because they still share similar values that formed the foundation of their relationship, as they value learning, philosophy, and dialogue.

Rahel, a psychologist, and Peter, a university lecturer, form an interesting relationship in which they feel unfulfilled yet recognise that they couldn’t live without each other. Their difficult relationship also reveals itself in the personalities of their children, the dramatic Selma who often sees herself as a victim of circumstances, and the distant Simon who chooses to serve the state as a military officer. A fatherless child, Rahel finds herself asking if there’s a possibility that her mother’s closest friend might be her biological father.

In a story that spans two weeks (Daniela Krien organises her chapters into days and weeks), the protagonists learn about some factors that make relationships work (and don’t always work). Daniela Krien also approaches her novel through a contemporary situation, bringing the recent pandemic as the backdrop of the story and setting up the story in a country house in Dorotheenstadt - far from their daily life in Dresden - where the protagonists are given space to reflect on the states they’re in with the company of a few animals and occasional visitors, which give a more intimate view towards the readers given the lack of contemporary novel that brings up the pandemic as its backdrop. It’s also a story of reconciliation, and taking it further could also be seen as a reflection on the way former East Germans have been living since the German reunification.

In Stanley Tucci's food memoir Taste (which I've also been reading this week), he describes wanting to make a "foreign film", which he describes as character-driven, eschews stereotypes and ends ambigiously. This made me smile as it captures quite accurately the kind of films and books that I love. The Fire, German author Daniela Krien's latest novel translated into English by Jamie Bulloch, falls squarely into this category.

Rahel and Peter are a couple in mid-life about to embark on a holiday to a remote holiday cottage in Bavaria when they receive news that the cottage has been destroyed in a fire. In a last-minute change of plan, they depart to the countryside outside their home city of Dresden for a couple of weeks to take care of the house and farm of friends Ruth and Viktor, in the wake of Viktor's admission to hospital following a stroke.

Alone for two weeks, with the company of just a few animals and the occasional visit from their two adult children, Rahel and Peter are forced to address the shortcomings in their marriage and the struggle to adapt to a changing world as they mourn their youth and confront their own mortality.

There's a keen insight into midlife here that Krien skilfully captures. Don't expect a lot to happen, but if, like me, Tucci has described your kind of book, then this might fit the bill for you as it did for me. 4/5 stars

*Many thanks to @quercusbooks who sent me an arc of this book to read via @netgalley. The Fire will be published on 8 June. As always, this is an honest review.*

The Fire is a powerful and moving novel that explores important themes with great depth and sensitivity. It is a testament to the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity, and a celebration of the power of friendship and community to help us overcome life's challenges.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

I have a weird relationship with German writer: it's a hit or miss and in this case it was a hit. A well plotted and thought provoking book about a couple and how they face the coming of age and a crisis in their relationship.
The author did a good job and the characters are vivid and well plotted.
A bit slow at times but it never drags
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

This is a superb novel, translated from the German original. Rahel and Peter, originally from Eastern Germany, find their holiday cancelled as the rental property burned town. Instead, they head to Ruth and Victor's home, a good few hours away, to house-sit - cats, a horse and a stork. Victor is in rehab because of a stroke. It later transpires that Victor has a more significant role in Rahel's life, one that has only recently come to light.

The story focuses on Rahel and Peter's relationship, and how it has become sexless, to an extent, and they sleep separately. Selma, their daughter, comes to stay with Max and Theo, her children. She has problems with Vincent, her partner. The children's manners are not good - but Selma doesn't like them being reprimanded. There is evident tension in the family, something that causes Rahel, in particular, stress. As a mental health professional, she is mindful of her own family's situation being complicated, like that of her clients.

I love the simplicity of Krien's prose - the way she deals with excruciating issues in a beautiful way. It ends on a sad note but also, one with hope - and this makes 'The Fire' a great read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this novel.

4.5 stars

A beautiful, simple, well told story.

The cover attracted me to this book plus I'm a sucker for an author I've not read before and I love a translation. I've ceryainly not read many books by German authors.

So the story is that Rahel and Peter are told that the holiday they had booked has to be cancelled due to a fire. However very shortly after they are contacted by a family friend asking if they will stay at her home as her husband is going into rehab after a debilitating stroke.

The house is set in woods, by a lake and was the summer haunt of Rahel's family where they stayed with Ruth and her husband Victor.

The story itself deals with all the issues facing those of us in middle age - feeling out of sync with both the young and elderly, not quite knowing if our career is what we wanted it to be, feeling out of step with our children and grandchildren plus all the joys of physical changes as our bodies age. Rahel is also dealing with the onset of menopause, which has made all her emotions just that bit more difficult to deal with. Add to that the fact that she and her husband seem to be travelling in two different emotional directions.

This is a fascinating look at the changes we will all experience to some degree or other. The writing is beautiful. Its a well rounded tale that should appeal to almost anyone who enjoys the wide genre that is literary fiction. The only drawback of this novel is that, for me, I simply wanted more of it.

I saw Daniela Krien at the Cheltenham Literary Festival a couple of years ago, talking about her previous novel, Love In Five Acts. I enjoyed that novel. In my review at the time, I wrote

"I did find some cultural dissonance as all these women had grown up in East Germany ... They all had opportunities denied to their parents. I heard Jenny Erpenbeck speak recently on the East German experience of "freedom" when the Berlin Wall came down. I think this fed into my understanding about capitalism not equalling freedom and how the aspirations of a nation who had imagined a "better version" of socialism had been lost through unification."

The Fire, addresses again, this theme of the life experience of "Easterners" who have been faced with a new normal, yet cannot or do not want to unlearn all of their roots. The protagonists Rahel and Peter (a couple in their 50s) value learning, philosophy, art, debate yet have adult children who have grown up as Western. Whilst this features in the book, the focus is on the elasticity of a long marriage, or not.

Rahel is a psychotherapist, Peter a university lecturer. Peter has been called out on his approach to gender politics at work and the subsequent fallout has made him distance himself from the marriage. We find the couple away from home and in Rahel's head trying to understand this change, whether she can engineer a rapprochement to meet her emotional needs and whether their previously symbiotic connection can be restored.

It is an existential riff which is interrupted back and forth with family dynamics current and past. I found it completely engrossing - the small stuff of daily life overlaid with huge individual and societal issues.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Quercus Books for the opportunity to read and review

Daniel Krien’s understated novella explores a long marriage at a point of crisis over three summer weeks spent housesitting in the countryside.
Rahel and Peter’s marriage has been under strain since a student put Peter at the centre of a social media fracas. When Ruth asks her to housesit while her husband is recuperating from a stroke, Rahel is reluctant but Ruth is her late mother’s best friend. She and Viktor were the only constants of Rahel and her sister’s rackety childhood. Over the next few weeks Rahel and Peter fall into a routine: Peter cares for Ruth and Viktor’s many animals, taking more pleasure in their company than he appears to in Rahel’s; Rahel gardens, reflecting on her marriage, the young people she sees in therapy and her daughter whose relationship is in trouble just as her own is.
Nothing much happens in this beautifully crafted novella which lays bare our need to know who we are and our interconnectedness with those with whom we share our lives but by the end of the three weeks it spans much will have been resolved. All three of the novels I’ve read by Krien have been characterised by a quietly perceptive understanding of human nature and relationships, each of them expertly translated by Jamie Bulloch. So pleased that MacLehose Press has chosen the same cover designer for The Fire as they did for Love in Five Acts: both suit their respective novels perfectly.