The Fire Thief - Softcover

Guppy, Stephen

3.12

16 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887621422 ISBN 13: 9780887621420

Publisher: Thomas Allen Pub, 2004

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Set in the 1960s, The Fire Thief is the story of Sonny Wheeler, who grew up in a time of '50s conformity that exploded into revolution, protest, and days of rage for many of his generation. When his mother remarries, teenaged Sonny moves with his new family to Danforth, Washington, a city that exists solely because of the nuclear power plant humming at its core. This is the Cold War at its height: his stepfather is a nuclear engineer, his home is visited every month by FBI agents looking for Soviet spies, and the daughter of high school science teached is named Marie Curie. Sonny's ony connection to the world outside this stifling city is his wild Aunt Alice, a lounge club singer who rejects all of the social norms of the age. Having fallen in love with the angst-ridden Karen, Sonny follows her descent into radicalism and joins the Weathermen, a revolutionary group dedicated to the overthrow of the state and the atomic utopia their parents had created. After staging the theft of pl

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About the Author:

Poet and short story writer Stephen Guppy lives on Vancouver Island. He is the author of Another Sad Day at the Edge of the Empire and the poetry collections Understanding Heaven, which was shortlisted for the BC Book Prize/Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry, and Blind Date with the Angel: The Diane Arbus Poems. A new short story collection entitled The Work of Mercy is also forthcoming from Thomas Allen Publishers, containing the story Downwind, which was shortlisted for The Journey Prize. The Fire Thief is his first novel.

Review:

...a masterful piece of storytelling, with well-drawn characters and imagined situations that seem all too real. (Star Phoenix)

Guppy's narrative is conversational and accessible, and he successfully tackles the book's heavy subjects without being didactic. (Georgia Straight)

...[a] powerful debut novel...Guppy sharply evokes character and milieu in dialogue and prose that are skilfully shaped. (Vancouver Sun)

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