On Fire

Part comedy, part mystery, part allegory, On Fire is narrated alternately by two characters: Matti Iverly, a fourteen-year-old girl with Tourette Syndrome. In Matti's case, her tics are primarily vocal. As she confides early in the book, "At school they called me Tourette's Girl, like I came out of a phone booth wearing a costume and made funny noises for people's entertainment. But I was a serious person, waiting for a serious purpose." When a young man with amnesia wonders out of the heart of wildfire country, Matti finds that purpose and fulfills it with courage, humour and dignity. Within the scope of the story, it's clear that Matti rules despite the isolation of her village, and the ominous care-taking to which she commits herself in trying to right the life of Dan, the strange seventeen-year-old teen with amnesia who mysteriously appears out of the smoke and fire and then disappears again. When Dan first takes up the narration, he's hiding out in a ghost town across the...