Almost a decade ago, I read Sonia Orchard’s debut novel The Virtuoso (2008) which won the Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction. I was impressed, but it’s been a long time between novels, so I refreshed my memory of the theme from my review, to find that in this new novel — though the plot is entirely different — once again it’s a case of a friendship that sours…
Lara is a thirty-something high-achiever about to become a mother for the first time when she visits the surviving family of her best friend Alice, a year after Alice died in a house fire. Lara is devastated by this loss, even though their long-term friendship was as good as over.
That friendship originated in a shared view of the world, nourished by the feminist ideals they aspired to after completing Women’s Studies at the University of Melbourne in the 1990s. But plans to travel the world together and ‘have it all’ fell apart when Alice opted to keep an unplanned baby and in her early twenties took up an ‘earth mother’ lifestyle in the bush. With the charismatic musician Crow she has two more children, and the gulf between her life and Lara’s widens as Lara takes off around the world and builds her career.
It was nostalgia for the shared good times that sustained continued contact — and Orchard writes brilliantly about the hectic lifestyle they had, following Crow’s band and partying hard.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/03/05/into-the-fire-by-sonia-orchard/ ( )