The Burning Air by Erin Kelly

Published by Pamela Dorman Books on February 21, 2013 

I was prepared to abandon The Burning Air in its early stages, thinking the story was the sort of clichéd family drama that just doesn't appeal to me. I'm glad I stuck with it. The plot is anything but clichéd, and the drama is both powerful and convincing.

Lydia has a tumor and expects to die soon, a fact she has concealed from her husband and children. She has been keeping journals all her life, and now feels compelled to write about the shameful event she has long kept hidden. This device is a familiar start to a novel, a suspense builder that leaves the reader wondering about Lydia's dark secret. The next sections follow Sophie, Lydia's daughter, as she copes with Lydia's hospitalization and death. Lydia's secret lurks in the background -- or has it disappeared altogether? -- as the story evolves into the saga of the MacBride family.

The first quarter of The Burning Air seems to foreshadow a mundane story about a dysfunctional family, complete with resentments and infidelity and Sophie's mental health issues. All of this is familiar territory, but the story takes on a new dimension when Sophie's baby goes missing, along with her brother's new girlfriend. The missing child energizes the story while giving the reader cause to feel sympathy for Sophie, whose litany of woes threatened to make her too tedious to bear. But how, the reader wonders, does this missing child relate to Lydia and her terrible secret?

Erin Kelly leaves the reader with a bit of a cliffhanger as the focus suddenly shifts from the present to the past and from Sophie to a new character, Darcy Kellaway, whose story is told in the first person. It is an engrossing psychological study of a life gone wrong. The characterization of homeschooled Darcy and of Darcy's domineering mother is detailed and convincing. Kelly makes it easy to understand why Darcy develops a twisted, life-dominating obsession, and watching him dedicate his life to revenge is fascinating. Kelly teases the reader with occasional reminders of Lydia's secret and rather dramatically reconfirms its existence, even dropping a hint as to what it involves, but it remains a mystery as the story circles back to Sophie's missing baby. The final sections of Darcy's story make it possible for the reader to reinterpret seemingly inconsequential events that take place earlier in the novel.

Just when the plot seems to be coming to a climax, the story again changes point of view, this time focusing on Lydia's husband, Rowan. Picking up with the discovery of the missing child, the story moves forward at a furious pace, ending only after another shift of perspective, this time to the person responsible for the baby's disappearance (and for whom it is impossible not to feel sympathy). We finally learn Lydia's secret, and it ties up a dangling plot thread in a satisfying conclusion to a skillfully crafted story.

In short, a book I nearly quit reading in its early stages became increasingly intense as the story neared its midpoint and absorbed my attention in its second half. The Burning Air is a family drama but there's nothing mundane about it. The characters are believable and Kelly's prose is elegant. The story takes unexpected turns but never strays from the path of plausibility. In fact, it's the "this could really happen" vibe that makes the story so chilling. After a slow start, The Burning Air turned out to be an intelligent thriller.

RECOMMENDED