Review: Notes on Surviving the Fire
This Review of Notes of Surviving the Fire is part of my What to Read After YA series and fits in with several of my popular book lists. I found this book to be a very compelling read, so let’s dive in!
Review of Notes on Surviving the Fire
Notes on Surviving the Fire was a lot of kinds of books in one.
Books that mash up subgenres sometimes make me wary, but I thought that all the elements of the book worked really well together. The book is:
- a literary mystery
- an amateur detective story
- a book about the educational-industrial complex and where a lowly grad student falls in the caste system. As a former grad student myself, I understand. My work study job as a grad student was in the university payroll office, so I got a first-hand look the pay scale of administration > full professors > adjunct professors > grad students.
- a very millennial take on the world, making it a perfect fit for me list of Mysteries with Gen Z and Millennial Detectives
- a very California noir sort of story, about the evil that lurks under that glossy California surface
- a story of navigating the trauma of sexual assault. Content advisory: there is a lot in this book that could be tough to read for anyone, and especially an SA survivor. This book would feel right at home in my list of YA Books About Sexual Assault and Rape Culture. If you are someone interested in Title IX and how it works from the perspective of an assault survivor, the book talks a lot about that.
- Finally, this book gave me MAJOR Veronica Mars vibes: the SoCal location, the focus on the corruption and suffering under the sunny lifestyle, the college campus, the sexual assault aspect. Check out my list of Books Like Veronica Mars!
Who and what is Notes on Surviving the Fire About?
Sarah is a doctoral student in religious studies at a coastal California school that seems modeled on UC Santa Barbara. Her research centers around justifications of violence across Buddhist traditions. (This will turn out to be thematic, and the former English major in me really does love a thematic book.)
After Sarah finds her best friend and fellow grad student Nathan dead of an apparent overdose, she can’t help but feel that something is wrong. She doesn’t believe he was taking drugs OR would take his own life, and finds evidence to suggest that maybe he didn’t.
So, while also navigating her job as a TA and doctoral student, trying to cope with the terrible trauma of sexual assault, and feeling furious about all of it, she sets out to investigate Nathan’s death. With the help of a police officer who looks like … Rick Astley.
The Rick Astley thing threw me for a bit of a loop because he’s an 80s singer, making him a little old for a millennial like Sarah to reference, but the 80s were iconic and he was a great singer.
Spoilers for Notes on Surviving the Fire
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I really did enjoy Notes on Surviving the Fire. It was intense, even hard to read at timesbut was also well-written and really compelling. It’s a book that will stick with me!
