Fireweather

Miranda Darling’s highly praised novel Thunderhead (2024) was described at the time as a bleak suburban comedy, a story set in the course of a single day in the life of a woman on the edge of things, trapped in domestic life and motherhood, with nods to Plath and Woolf, and a healthy dose of humour that left our reviewer, ‘[unable to] contain … snorts of laughter and sighs of solidarity’. The follow-up is this month’s Fireweather, the continuation of Winona’s story.

Winona is not well. Her children are no longer with her, the word ‘divorce’ is triggering her thinking, her mental health has put her over that edge she skirted in Thunderhead, sending her to appointments with professionals. Or is she the most sane person there is, with a clarity of mind that others can’t grasp? Meanwhile, the weather outside is troubling: firestorms run along the east coast, ash is in the air, the light is orange. Her internal dialogue is explored expertly on the page, as her ruminations include interventions from a number of voices (The Poet, The Nanny, The Archer) as well as non-human animals and plant life. Coupled with thought excursions into poetry, fiction, history, aphorisms, pop psychology and beyond, Darling explores the life of a mind, rendering the experience of being inside the head of another – the self in the world – in a way that is both familiar and unfamiliar. This is at times not an easy read – nor should it be, given the depths of psychological revelation the author is portraying here, but Darling’s vision and affection for Winona’s journey and her attention to the way words settle on the page makes it a rewarding one.