Burn

Fink creates a breathtakingly original, powerful, and believable universe. Burn is painful and oddly gentle and funny at the same time. It delineates marvelously fluid boundaries between dream and reality, justice and absurdity, inside and outside, terror and elation. Moving, eye-opening, and full of subtle layers that resonate long after you put it down, Burn is a true gift.

A mysterious story that kept me engrossed - from the affair between her protagonist and the mysterious blond boy, to the gathering storm of threatening government surveillance, BURN was suspenseful and thought provoking. An apt tale for our times.

This is easily the best work of literature I have read in years.And Fink tells her "fable for the Bush/Rumsfeld era" through one of the most fascinatingly unreliable narrators I have ever encountered: Mrs. Sylvia Edelman.Sylvie, despite or because of all the asides, is some storyteller. And she is going through menopause and late-night hot- and cold-flashes and possible hallucinations and bags of red licorice as she regales the reader, like a guest at her kitchen table, with the events of the final days of 1953 and of Sylvan Lake Colony, a socialist Jewish workers colony from the 1930s that the Feds are closing in on. Only a few of the founding members remain, including Sylvie, staying steadfast in the home she and her late husband Max built.Out back of her house, it seems Sylvie has found a naked boy among the tomatoes in her garden. His only possessions are a satchel with a bandanna and set of dog-tags he wears around his neck with the name Simon. He vanishes and reappears for several days till Sylvie gets a hold of him.Burn begins with this mystery and only gets more mysterious as Simon and Sylvie grow closer and the Feds, at the height of the Red Scare, close in. Old comrades disappear to Moscow or Jersey; Sylvie's sister Rose begs her to leave and get respectable; Simon cannot or will not talk and may or may not be a government spy.To tell more of the story would ruin the beauty of this book. It is the uncertainty of events and Sylvie's grip on reality, coupled with Sylvie's deceptively simple but lyrical language, that make Burn a true work of art that recalls the writing of Faulkner as easily as Bernard Malamud. And it burns with a beautiful eroticism that echoes the passion and poetry of the original Song of Solomon.I cannot recommend this book enough--to everyone who is interested in reading a timely and beautifully told fable that is also an amazing work of literature. Fink is destined to be one of America's greatest authors.

In a world where "literary fiction" has come to mean any pretentious [fluff] published by multi-national corporations that festers in high-end "independent" bookstore display windows, Jennifer Fink delivers the antidote. Burn is a meditation in an emergency-- to borrow from a Frank O'Hara poem-- which is apt, since-- like O'Hara, Fink renders the everyday in every way. Fink manages to sustain O'Hara's whimsy and play while carefully mediating doom. O'Hara is an unlikely comparison to make for Fink's darkly comic, brooding (ir)rationalism, but O'Hara incants that every word may hold charm, alarm and Fink adds that every gesture may hold harm, alarm!!! Burn brings 50s paranoia to a millennial audience that better damn well be scared. The point is that Burn is a work of impure brilliance that makes any reviewer. Congratulations to Suspect Thoughts Press for putting out another gem-- and to Jennifer Fink for mixing us up with the madness of it all.

A family member gave me Ann Coulter's Treason as a gag gift for my birthday (I'm the only Democrat in my all-Republican family, which is why I'm in San Francisco and they're still in Oklahoma). There was much laughter until I read the book. Then a bookworm friend of mine told me about the underground buzz on a book from a new press in San Francisco. I bought the book and read it in one weekend.The book was Burn by Jennifer Natalya Fink. And not only is it the perfect antidote to Ann Coulter, it is easily the best work of literature I have read in years.Fink tells her "fable for the Bush/Rumsfeld era" through one of the most fascinatingly unreliable narrators I have ever encountered: Mrs. Slyvia Edelman.Slyvie, despite or because of all the asides, is some storyteller. And she is going through menopause and late-night hot- and cold-flashes and possible hallucinations and bags of red licorice as she regales the reader, like a guest at her kitchen table, with the events of the final days of 1953 and of Slyvan Lake Colony, a socialist Jewish workers colony from the 1930s that the Feds are closing in on. Only a few of the founding members remain, including Slyvie, staying steadfast in the home she and her late husband Max built.Out back of her house, it seems Slyvie has found a naked boy urinating on tomatoes in her garden. His only possessions are a satchel with a bandanna and set of dog-tags he wears around his neck with the name Simon. He vanishes and reappears for several days till Slyvie gets a hold of him.Burn begins with this mystery and only gets more mysterious as Simon and Slyvie grow closer and the Feds, at the height of the Red Scare, close in. Old comrades disappear to Moscow or Jersey; Slyvie's sister Rose begs her to leave and get respectable; Simon cannot or will not talk and may or may not be a government spy.To tell more of the story would ruin the beauty of this book. It is the uncertainty of events and Slyvie's grip on reality, coupled with Slyvie's deceptively simple but lyrical language, that make Burn a true work of art that recalls the writing of Faulkner as easily as Bernard Malamud. And it burns with a beautiful eroticism that echoes the passion and poetry of the original Song of Solomon.I cannot recommend this book enough--to everyone who is interested in reading a timely and beautifully told fable that is also an amazing work of literature. Fink is destined to be one of America's greatest authors.