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I couldn’t put down Trial By Fire
Book Review
By Derryll White
Fyfield, Francis (1990). Trial By Fire.
This is an early work by Francis Fyfield, a writer who has gone on to dominate in her field. Even this early the desire to detail, to minutely examine cause and effect, action and reaction, dominates the work. Fyfield is exquisite in adding in all the small, meaningful details and starting the reader to guess how they all might fit.
This is an uncommon work in that 30 years ago Fyfield was already working to bring the issues of mental illness to the public’s attention. As a society we have not progressed very far down that path but Francis Fyfield had Crown Prosecutor Helen Hunt pointing the way.
Fyfield writes so well that the reader is drawn along effortlessly, accepting the story as a plausible rendition of life in rural Essex, England. She shows great caution in her approach to human relationships, feeling the ground and charting a course that yields base understanding of what drives people in their everyday lives. I couldn’t put down ‘Trial By Fire.’
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Excerpts from the novel:
EXPECTATIONS – In addition to those with no instinct to go south or west, there were those seeking the nearest patch of the greenish field to the East End convenient for market trade, a touch of fraud, or a place to own a house acceptable to a mother still locked in the fumes of Betnal Green wither pub and all the blacks. Branston had never been much of a community, simply a place.
WOMAN’S ROLE – As the woman of the piece, like all the other women, it was her role to make the social effort, but chatter died on her like the end of sudden rain. She did not despise domestic bliss but, having ploughed the furrow of thoroughly professional life for a dozen years, remained puzzled why anyone with choice settled to anything less.
RELATIONSHIPS –… yet another day had gone by without real conversation; the weekends of life were lost so entirely by midweek.
SHOPPING – Helen was looking for the boost of a new autumn coat, replacements for down-at-the-heel shoes, and a new pair of trousers to make her look at home in ultracasual Branston. Having decided on that, she would not be disappointed to return with a tube of toothpaste. The looking was the thing: that was the way it was with shopping, the way she liked it.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
