A review by thebeardedpoet
On Fire by Larry Brown

4.0

On Fire is Larry Brown's memoir of being a firefighter in Oxford, MS. It also touches on his efforts to become a writer. Both from Oxford, Brown is often compared to Faulkner, but Brown's writing style reminds me of Hemingway. He uses a simple vocabulary and clear descriptions but knows how to naturally intensify prose with sentence variations, including lists and run-on sentences. If you're not squeamish about graphic details of human injuries (and deaths) and can tolerate depictions of pet and livestock deaths, you might find this book enthralling. I read it aloud to Christi while on vacation in Oxford, and she didn't care for the content. But I found it fascinating, intense, and even moving.