Wild Fires
Written by Sophie Jai
Narrated by Sophie Jai
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
*WINNER OF THE 2023 FRED KERNER BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION*
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 TORONTO BOOK AWARDS*
*FINALIST FOR THE 2023 RAKUTEN KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE*
Grief is like an inside joke: you have to have been there to really get it.
Everything Cassandra Rampersad knows about her family history has been overheard: whispered behind a closed door or written in a notebook stowed away. Cassandra has always been curious, and when a death in the family means she has to return home to Toronto, it seems like the perfect opportunity to finally discover what it is that no one else will talk about.
But uncovering the past will never be easy when it has stayed hidden for so long. And with every new revelation, Cassandra realises that there is a reason that her family has never been good at grieving…
A powerful meditation on memory and loss, Wild Fires is a beautifully crafted novel from a stunning new literary voice.
Sophie Jai
WILD FIRES is Sophie Jai's debut novel. She was selected as a 2020 Writer-in-Residence and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford for WILD FIRES, and was longlisted for the 2019 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel. Jai was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She splits her time between Toronto and London.
Related to Wild Fires
Related audiobooks
The Ministry of Guidance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Keeping the House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Still Water Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Danny Boy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ginger and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Your Show: 'The football novel is back.' The Times Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In Bloom: 'A beautiful tale of resilience' Heat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Allspice Bath Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Memory of Us: A profound evocation of memory and post-Windrush life in Britain Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yara Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Goodbyes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWild Dances: My Queer and Curious Journey to Eurovision Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHidden Fires Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Book of Extraordinary Tragedies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Passing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlaze Island Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Is This OK?: One Woman's Search For Connection Online Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFear and Lovely Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Habitations: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhy Do You Dance When You Walk? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Long Live the Post Horn! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Illusion of Simple Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Moom Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat We Give, What We Take: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Orlando: A Biography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Fiction For You
Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Covenant of Water Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: A Hunger Games Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hunger Games Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stardust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tom Lake: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yellowface: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The House in the Cerulean Sea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Measure: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of Achilles: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Tan's Circle of Women Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Their Eyes Were Watching God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Wild Fires
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It is the death of her cousin Chevy that brings Cassandra from London back to Toronto where her family is based after having left Trinidad. But she not only returns to the funeral but to a whole history of her family that suddenly pops up again. Stories she had forgotten but now remembers, things which have always been unsaid despite that fact that everybody knew them and secrets that now surface in the big house in Florence Street where the tension is growing day by day. The sisters and aunts find themselves in an exceptional emotional state that cracks open unhealed wounds which add to the ones that have come with the death of Chevy.Sophie Jai was herself born in Trinidad just like her protagonist and grew up in Toronto, “Wild Fires” is her first novel and was published in 2021. It centres around a family in grief, but also a family between two countries and also between the past and the present and things that have never been addressed between the members. Having been away for some time allows Cassandra a role a bit of an outsider and she sees things of her family she has never understood.The author wonderfully interweaves the present story of the family gathering at the Toronto home to mourn the loss and Cassandra’s childhood recollections and well-known family stories. Thus, we get to know the deceased and his role in the family web. Like Chevy’s story, also the aspects that link but also separate the generations of sisters are uncovered thus exposing long avoided conflicts.The novel raises the questions if you can ever flee from the family bonds and how to deal with what happened in the past and has never openly be spoken out loud and discussed. Sophie Jai finds the perfect words to express the nuances in the atmosphere and paces the plot according to the characters’ increasingly conflicting mood. I liked how the characters and their story unfolds, yet, I would have preferred a more accelerated pace and at the beginning, I struggled to understand the connection between them which was a bit confusing.