Description
‘This liquid verse novel drops like a rivulet down the valley of this beleaguered world. A brilliant blend of autofiction and eco-memoir, Kinsella delivers an aching tour-de-force. The Science of Fire is a prayer for meaning in the Pyrocene.’ Tony Hughes-d’Aeth
The Science of Fire is a unique experience. It’s the story of a relationship, a tense crime mystery, and a dizzying, stunning rendering of environment in all its of its beauty, fragility and consolation.
An unnamed man is haunted by the death of his life partner in a laboratory accident. They were working as a particle physicist at a university campus, and increasingly he and a colleague of theirs come to suspect foul play. The verse narrative is marked by corporate subterfuge, and the search for truth.
In a counterpoint between art and science, the author masterfully captures in high resolution both human greed and threat, and the animal, plant and insect life of a precious world that demands our care and a true understanding of science. An environmental work of great feeling, The Science of Fire holds you close from beginning to end.
‘Told in taut, sharp poetic verse this is the story of a close relationship, an unsolved crime, a tribute to a lost friend, a love letter to a partner, a moving picture of a landscape in crisis and a scathing critique of the pillage and ravenous consumption by humans of Country. Set against the backdrop of the black summer bush fires, the story moves in a seamless arcing circle through a landscape haunted by both the death of a friend and the unresolved violence and trauma of the ghosts of the past still living in the present. As the disastrous impacts of a human-made climate crisis on a finite planet erupt around us, The Science of Fire by John Kinsella is an environmental tour-de-force.’
Jeanine Leane, author of Gawimarra Gathering