Holding Fire: A Love Story - Hardcover

Wald, Elissa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1893956148 ISBN 13: 9781893956148

Publisher: Context Books, 2001

Synopsis

A stripper long obsessed with firemen meets the man who rescued her from a burning building as a child and begins a journey through a doomed marriage. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PROLOGUE

The three firemen were burned alive in the hallway of a Brooklyn tenement. They went down fighting a door that would not open. That door was their access to oxygen and life, and it almost yielded to the body of Captain Seamus O'Day, a big man with broad shoulders who was used to tackling things. It was dented and battered, but it stayed closed, and the three men burned in 2000 degrees of heat for a little over five minutes. On the other side of the door, there was a goldfish in a bowl, swimming in water that wasn't even warm.
The fire company that lost its three men took the goldfish back with them to their firehouse. No one challenged their claim. And they keep it there even now and take care of it. They dote on it, as much as it's possible for a group of men to dote on a fish; they change its room-temperature water and they feed it every day.

From Publishers Weekly

New York City firefighters assume center stage in this meandering, sometimes clumsy debut novel. Alicia, a writer of bad poetry who strips to pay the bills, jump-starts the action when she rediscovers Jonah Malone, the fireman who saved her life when she was five but only after Wald spends the first few chapters chronicling Alicia's torrid three-month affair with another fireman, Jake Schiller, the very model of homophobic manliness. The improbable relationship between Alicia and Jonah culminates in marriage, though wedded bliss quickly deteriorates because of several factors: the psychological wounds caused by Jonah's abusive upbringing and service in Vietnam; the jealous machinations of Wes, Jonah's wealthy gay mentor; and a tragic fire that kills three firemen and figuratively envelopes Jonah in its aftermath. Wald, whose first book, Meeting the Master, was a collection of s&m tales and poetry, tries to spice things up with plenty of sex indeed, it seems every firefighter in New York is a muscular but sensitive stud. The novel piles on the cliches ("like a light at the end of the night's tunnel") and flows unevenly, straying too often into bodice-ripper territory (including a mock rape or two), and on several occasions the firefighters grow indistinguishable from one another. Moreover, Alicia remains a half-formed character, her motivations and background a mystery that continuously vexes, because Wald employs her as a thread tying various characters together. The ease, for example, with which she falls in love with the much older, emotionally scarred Jonah is puzzling, lending the relationship a superficial sheen. Although Wald has taken on some interesting material here, the novel never really heats up.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Context Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1893956148
• ISBN 13: 9781893956148
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300