Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction

Charles Baxter · ★★★★★

I have now read and re-read some these essays numerous times but I think they still work best ordered the way they are in this collection. This time around the essay that stuck with me most was the one on fiction and the inner life of objects - Talking Forks. I think it helped that I had just finished re-reading To the Lighthouse and in it he writes a detailed analysis of Woolf's use of narrative conscience. I forgot he went into this particular book so it was a happy circumstance to have the material within mental reach. Anyway, this is a brilliant and generous collection of work from Baxter. I get something new every time I visit.