On Fire Island

As an author, I usually try to disguise the self insert characters at least a little. But in the opening pages of ON FIRE ISLAND by Jane Rosen, the author makes it clear she’s going all in and giving us a main character that works in publishing (an editor who oddly edits her own spouses books). However, this kind of works because the self same narrator is dead. Which we also find out pretty quickly into the first page.

As far as dead narrators go, Julia Morse is a fairly likable one. She looks at most things with a dark sense of humor and wonders right along with the reader why she is still here observing the goings on of her family and neighbors on fire island the summer after her own funeral. Julia’s death provides us two major narrative advantages. One, she is clearly a very omniscient third person narrator, so we can follow around several different groups of people on fire island and get the scoop behind their backstories. It’s not odd that Julia gives us people’s entire life histories, including that of the guy that makes the sandwiches at her favorite store, because she is chatting with us from the vantage point of death. Second, her romance with her literary star writer husband would be way too saccharine for me if this was a romance. It’s all perfect looking people with exciting careers falling in love and not much struggle. I would be happy for her, but not lining up to read about it in a novel. After her death? Well, it’s just tragic and poignant and I really needed to know what happened with Julia and her spouse.

Julia’s now widower husband is one of the many characters we meet on fire island, and understandably our tour guide is rather fond of him. There’s a plot point about his last contracted novel that could be a nice reveal for anyone who doesn’t see it coming from a mile away like I did. Either way, his grief is handled with that sense of macabre humor that I already noted, and his story line is generally fulfilling. In fact, the ability to craft multiple genuinely fulfilling story lines for a host of well fleshed out characters is the highlight of On Fire Island. From the two teenagers looking to give each other a very exciting send off before college to the kleptomaniac who seems to only steal restaurant silverware, every person we meet is given a full treatment and we come to know and love them as we do our own quirky neighbors.

This story is a love letter to Fire Island, which will be the setting for the following two books in the series that are seeded here, but also to the communities of people we create around ourselves wherever we go. Sure, the narrator may be dead, but she formed so many connections while she was alive and that web continues on spinning without her. Plus, the publishing bits even seem somewhat realistic. (I especially enjoyed the agent). I’m looking forward to reading the next two books, although I will admittedly miss Julia. Even though I only met her long past her fictional demise, it’s nice to chat one publishing person to another.

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