by Sarah Butler
Writing Before the Fire also coincided with a writing residency hosted by Age Concern Lancashire and CSV Learning North West, working with young people and people living with dementia. I’m especially grateful to Mechila, Daniel, Shakira, Liam, Aidan, Shelia and Rob Warbrick for their time, energy, honesty and patience.
The characters described in the novel are entirely fictional, but conversations with all of the above were invaluable in helping me imagine them and their world.
In 2012, I wrote my MSc Urban Studies dissertation on narratives of the riots of 2011, an experience which again permeated the writing of Before the Fire. Thank you to Jane Rendell, Steve Pile, David Roberts, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Sophie Woolley and Luke Wright for their questions, answers, suggestions and support.
Thank you to Château de Lavigny and the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation for a blissful month of writing in summer 2014, and to Sharon Morris for sharing her Pembrokeshire cottage and creating an equally productive retreat.
I have a fantastic group of fellow writers whose feedback and support is massively appreciated. Particular thanks to Emma Claire Sweeney, Emily Midorikawa, Paul McVeigh, Yemisi Blake, Sarah-Clare Conlon, Sian Cummins, David Gaffney, Benjamin Judge and Adrian Slatcher.
I also have a brilliant pair of readers in Andrew Kidd and Francesca Main. Particular thanks to Francesca for being the most incisive, dedicated, generous editor a writer could hope to have.
And thank you, as ever, to my family for always being there and always believing, and to Matt, for everything – this one’s for you.
‘Butler is brilliant at capturing Stick’s inner teenage turmoil, his anger, his feelings of futility, the terrible depths of his grief and his easy contempt for adults who clumsily try to help. By setting the novel in the months leading up to the 2011 riots, Butler also hints at a wider social dimension to teenage disaffection, while ensuring that Stick remains a riveting and sympathetic character’
Daily Mail
‘Authentic, well-paced . . . Butler’s prose is microscopic, delicate and honest . . . Instead of trying to condone or condemn all young people, Butler is more interested in telling a human story about grief and how that can manifest itself in unflinching anger, no matter our age’
Nikesh Shukla, Independent
‘A gentle, wise and important story of modern youth’
Paul McVeigh, Metro
‘The portrait of a young man on the edge, consumed by rage and grief, is beautifully drawn and captivates the reader so well that as the story builds towards the climax the tension is almost unbearable. I liked too the flashes of humour and poignancy in the novel, which reads like a bitter-sweet love letter to Manchester’
Cath Staincliffe, author of Ruthless
‘A brilliant, punchy and utterly contemporary novel which reminds readers of the vitality and resilience of the novel – and the urgency of the issues it explores through its beautifully realised and notably passionate characters. Before the Fire is a novel about what it’s like to live now, created by a writer with an unerring eye and a heart which is both humane and discerning’
Bidisha, journalist, broadcaster and author of Asylum and Exile
‘To read Before the Fire is to walk several miles in other people’s shoes, such is the empathetic nature of Sarah Butler’s writing. We feel acutely Stick’s raw and raging grief, his disillusionment for the future, and the hopeless, heart-breaking gestures of those around him. It’s a tender, powerful, affecting novel, and one I enjoyed greatly’
Emylia Hall, author of The Book of Summers
‘A moving portrayal of a country in crisis, getting under the skin of both the issues and the people affected by them’
Emma Chapman, author of How To Be A Good Wife
‘Too few novels describe working-class lives and the context and reasons for their anger and hopelessness. I found the characters in Before the Fire real and authentic and was rooting for them throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed it’
Alex Wheatle
‘An extraordinary novel, set in a world that isn’t often written about with such a profound sense of understanding and truth. Stick is a beautifully drawn, complex, likeable, understandable boy/man, living on the edge and struggling with making sense of it all . . . Brilliant . . . A stirring read’
Mavis Cheek
BEFORE THE FIRE
Sarah Butler is the author of Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love, which was published in fifteen languages. She runs a consultancy which develops literature and arts projects that explore and question our relationship to place. Sarah has been writer in residence on the Central Line, the Greenwich Peninsula, and at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and has taught creative writing for the British Council in Kuala Lumpur. She lives in Manchester.
Also by Sarah Butler
TEN THINGS I’VE LEARNT ABOUT LOVE
First published 2015 by Picador
First published in paperback 2016 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2016 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-4472-5157-6
Copyright © Sarah Butler 2015
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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