Before the Fire

by Sarah Butler

It's June 2011. Stick and Mac are a couple of months shy of eighteen; summer's approaching and they're about to leave their north Manchester estate for the beaches of southern Spain. But the night before they're planning leave, Mac ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, the victim of a random knife attack, and suddenly Stick's going nowhere. His mum doesn't want him to leave the house; his dad's desperate to be his best friend; and his nan's boyfriend keeps telling him Mac's doing just fine in the spirit world. Then he meets J and she might just be everything he needs. Except she's a firebrand with a grudge against the police, and the August riots are just around the corner...

• ISBN10: 1447252152
• ISBN13: 9781447252153
• Publish Date: 12 March 2015
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 20 December 2016
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Picador
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[Kelly]

http://www.divabooknerd.com/2015/03/before-fire-by-sarah-butler.html
As readers, we want to be immersed in a storyline, we want to feel a connection to it's characters and invest in their plight. I was torn between the fascination that was Stick, otherwise known as Kieren, and wanting to smack him about with a shovel. His behavior made me cringe, but more importantly, Kieren made me feel, even if it was disgust. He's confronting, abrasive and crass. I loathed him, even before the incident. If your aspirations narrow down to drinking, getting high and getting off, it's time to reassess your life choices. He treated girls like sexual objects for his own gratification.There didn't seem to be any redeeming qualities to him at all.

Then he replaces one delinquent with another, his love interest only enables him further. I'm being judgmental, but it's clear both Stick and J are just a pair of felons in the making and he's the poster boy for juvenile detention. J replaces his best friend Mac, promising to help Stick through his grief but she was nothing more than a romantic sidekick that we never really know more than at face value.

The most striking aspect of Before The Fire is it's honesty and rawness. Stick isn't a pleasant character, he isn't even likable, but his story is told with brutal honestly and will strike a chord with readers wanting to delve into the dark world of grief and self loathing through substances. The most prevalent issue I had with his character, is his treatment of females as little more than sexual objects. Both he and Mac were only looking to get off, to put it bluntly. As much as I enjoy realistic fiction, his character grated on my nerves. He was far too confrontational and being older than the intended audience, I wanted to kick this dickhead into next week.

Although Before The Fire wasn't for me, in the right hands a reader will enjoy it's ability to cut through the bullshit and appreciate the depiction of a rough and desperate life of being lost. It does contain sexual situations, deplorable profanity and a realism that could have been mistaken to have been derived from a teenage boy himself, struggling with life.