Author: Elisa Shua Dusapin
Translator: Aneesa Abbas Higgins
Published: January 13, 2026, by S&S/Summit Books
Format: Kindle, 192 Pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Blurb: Agathe leaves New York and returns to her home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away.
She and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all those years, and they carry the weight of their own complicated lives. But now their father has died, and they must confront their childhood home on the outskirts of a country estate ravaged by a nearby fire before it is knocked down. They have nine days to empty it. As the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories, and resentments surface.
Tender and tense, haunting and evocative, The Old Fire is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s most personal and moving novel yet. An exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, it is also a graceful and profound look at the unsaid and the unanswered, the secrets that remain, and whether you can ever really go home again.
My Opinion: Every so often, a book sneaks up on me, and this novel did exactly that. At under 200 pages, it shouldn’t have hit as hard as it did, yet here I am full of feelings, full of questions, and already imagining the kind of conversations it would spark in a book club.
The novel follows two sisters, Agatha and Véra, who reunite after their father’s death to sort through the remnants of their childhood home. Agatha bolted the moment she was old enough, while Véra stayed behind to shoulder the responsibility she left her with. Their week together is a slow excavation of memory with humor tucked beside resentment, tenderness brushing up against old wounds, and a kind of honesty that only siblings can manage. Even so, plenty remains unspoken.
Dusapin threads in the girls’ earlier years with a light but deliberate hand with Véra’s sudden muteness, Agatha’s fierce instinct to protect her, and the mother who walked away without much care for what she left behind. These pieces don’t form a tidy puzzle, but they deepen the emotional terrain the sisters must navigate.
By the end, Dusapin resists the urge to explain everything. Instead, she leaves space for the reader to sit with the unknowns and stitch together meaning on their own. It’s unsettling in the best way. Not everyone will call this a perfect book, but it blindsided me, and now I’m left turning it over in my mind, accepting that some stories aren’t meant to be tied up neatly.
She and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all those years, and they carry the weight of their own complicated lives. But now their father has died, and they must confront their childhood home on the outskirts of a country estate ravaged by a nearby fire before it is knocked down. They have nine days to empty it. As the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories, and resentments surface.
Tender and tense, haunting and evocative, The Old Fire is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s most personal and moving novel yet. An exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, it is also a graceful and profound look at the unsaid and the unanswered, the secrets that remain, and whether you can ever really go home again.
My Opinion: Every so often, a book sneaks up on me, and this novel did exactly that. At under 200 pages, it shouldn’t have hit as hard as it did, yet here I am full of feelings, full of questions, and already imagining the kind of conversations it would spark in a book club.
The novel follows two sisters, Agatha and Véra, who reunite after their father’s death to sort through the remnants of their childhood home. Agatha bolted the moment she was old enough, while Véra stayed behind to shoulder the responsibility she left her with. Their week together is a slow excavation of memory with humor tucked beside resentment, tenderness brushing up against old wounds, and a kind of honesty that only siblings can manage. Even so, plenty remains unspoken.
Dusapin threads in the girls’ earlier years with a light but deliberate hand with Véra’s sudden muteness, Agatha’s fierce instinct to protect her, and the mother who walked away without much care for what she left behind. These pieces don’t form a tidy puzzle, but they deepen the emotional terrain the sisters must navigate.
By the end, Dusapin resists the urge to explain everything. Instead, she leaves space for the reader to sit with the unknowns and stitch together meaning on their own. It’s unsettling in the best way. Not everyone will call this a perfect book, but it blindsided me, and now I’m left turning it over in my mind, accepting that some stories aren’t meant to be tied up neatly.
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