Intense and unnerving ... There’s a lot to lament, and even more to rail against, in a novel that becomes a ferocious jeremiad against life’s suffocating forces ... It’s moments of sobering clarity such as this, and their promise of a redemptive ending, that carry the reader through so many harrowing pages of self-evisceration ... Harding’s protagonist is a singular creation: complex, contrary, drily funny in a characteristically Irish fashion. Written with great energy and generosity, Bright Burning Things is the raw and emotional story of a woman’s search for self-knowledge; one that grips from the beginning.
Lisa Harding’s second novel, Bright Burning Things is moving—humane and emotionally scrubbed raw—as a depiction of Sonya’s journey to the bottom of the bottle and (after her father’s intervention) her desperate efforts to claw her way back to sobriety to regain her life ... Bright Burning Things...offers both Sonya and the readers strands of hope. And despite its grim narrative, the book has its lighter, funnier moments ... Harding channels Sonya’s exposed nerve endings with a potent poignancy ... While Sonya resists embracing the surrender to a higher power, she does find sympathetic and thoughtful allies ... Their help doesn’t provide any simple answers or pat endings for Sonya. Harding is too determined to make us see the potential pitfalls that will forever lurk out there [.]
Compelling ... Harding seamlessly excavates our superficial notions of goodness ... I might have liked the book even more had Harding poked at motherhood without giving Sonya a problematic family past. The altered state of parenthood, a high as dizzying as alcohol, is too rarely discussed. We all need something bigger than ourselves. Parents of younger children can find themselves locked in a lonely, irreducible passion ... Harding brilliantly delineates Sonya’s clinging to Tommy ... Harding retains, to the end, those ambiguities that made Sonya a stellar performer of the broken women of Ibsen and Chekov. By refusing to finally 'solve' Sonya, she boldly exposes those hypocrisies of the chattering classes that create manipulative mothers and destroy childhoods.
The stakes in Harding’s Bright Burning Things, the Irish author’s U.S. debut, are stark and terrifying ... Grappling with the gap between faith and hopelessness, Sonya asks one of the institution’s nuns what prayer is. 'Think of prayer as a bridge between longing and belonging,' Sister Anne replies. Harding straddles that gulf, making a well-worn narrative shine with a heroine whose dogged triumphs accumulate over the course of this fast-paced and intensely lucid novel.
If you liked Shuggie Bain, you will adore Bright Burning Things for many reasons, specifically for the trenchant portrayal of alcoholism and the havoc it can wreak ... Harding’s familiarity with a rehab facility and the detoxification process is poignantly evident through her spare, candid language from the moment Sonya passed through the rehab’s gates ... Harding’s depiction of an alcoholic’s path to recovery is exceptional in its psychological acuity. She depicts Sonya struggling desperately with sorrow and addiction for much of the novel, drawing the reader into a vortex of helplessness. I was particularly struck by the moving scenes of an alcoholic’s physical and mental pain inside a long-term detox center, illuminating just how tough it is for an alcoholic to change their behavior.
Much of the story is predictable, but a ride can still be pleasant even when you know where you're going. Sympathetic readers will feel pangs for Sonya's experiences, and Harding's descriptions of intensified sensations are unforgettable ... Bright Burning Things is a redemptive portrait of addiction and the extreme emotions of a parent in distress.
... incisive ... Harding insightfully considers the burdens we place on single parents and people battling addiction ... Harding's portrayal of alcoholism's insidious self-rationalizations hits the mark, and she offers a not-often-heard perspective on well known recovery programs. Anyone who's ever attended such a meeting will recognize her depiction of the prevailing atmosphere, which encourages sharing but sometimes turns into a melodramatic, male-centric vanity pageant.
If you’re looking for a novel about addiction in which rehab or a savior figure makes all the difference, you might want to skip Irish author Lisa Harding’s Bright Burning Things. But if you’re interested in a novel that gives authentic voice to a modern woman’s alcoholism, pick up this smart, sensitive book ... hectic and affecting ... Harding’s December novel is, at its foundation, just the right story for this season: a woman who saves herself to give her son the ultimate gift of a healthy parent.
Addiction and recovery narratives have proliferated, blurring the lines of memoir and novel, and creating a genre all its own. Harding’s Bright Burning Things follows the expected tropes, and to some degree, there is a familiar predictability to the beats of the story: Sonya abuses alcohol; Sonya enters a rehabilitation program; Sonya recovers. What Harding introduces to differentiate the novel is this focus on Sonya’s desperation to be a good mother. Is it enough to carry the novel? ... to Harding’s credit, Sonya is somehow sympathetic, despite her faults ... The emotional center of this book is a mother’s love for her son, and whether that is enough to be triumphant over addiction. This is not a process novel revealing the daily grind of recovery, but instead an emotional experience driven by motherly love. Bright Burning Things contains few surprises, but the prose is clean and crisp, the narrative moves steadily along, and ultimately appeals to our desire to see the story through.
Harding takes readers on an intimate tour of a woman’s booze-addled mind, then ratchets up the heartbreak with a four-year-old and a dog ... Through Harding’s realistic writing, one feels the profound desperation and pain of addiction. Readers won’t soon forget this viscerally raw immersion into addiction.
n her soul-piercing sophomore novel, Bright Burning Things, Harding has crafted a sensitive, nuanced portrait of a single mother whose deep descent into alcoholism jeopardizes everything she holds most dear ... Capricious yet graceful stream-of-consciousness narration ... Like its heroine, Bright Burning Things is defiant and challenging, a wisp of crackling flame that illuminates even as it devours. Harding's intimate and exquisite character work draws readers toward new depths of empathy and forgiveness. With its tenderness for the protagonist, this novel stands as a searing indictment of the stigma placed on addiction and the undue burden laid on mothers, and as a plea for understanding as much as for change.
Blistering ... Harding brilliantly captures both the hilarity and wisdom of Sonya’s 12-step program, with her time in rehab poignantly complicated by Sonya’s separation from Tommy and her fear she might not be reunited with him. When Sonya views the world through sober eyes, the real struggle starts, and she movingly confronts the traumas that helped put the bottle to her lips in the first place. This unflinching portrait of a troubled, tender soul takes readers to the depths of the human heart.
