The Burning by Laura Bates

Author: Laura Bates

Title: The Burning 

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2019

Pages: 352

Genre: Young Adult

     A rumor is like a fire. You might think you’ve extinguished it but one creeping, red tendril, one single wisp of smoke is enough to let it leap back into life again. Especially if someone is watching, waiting to fan the flames ... New school. Tick. New town. Tick. New surname. Tick. Social media profiles? Erased. There’s nothing to trace Anna back to her old life. Nothing to link her to the ‘incident’.At least that’s what she thinks … until the whispers start up again. As time begins to run out on her secrets, Anna finds herself irresistibly drawn to the tale of Maggie, a local girl accused of witchcraft centuries earlier. A girl whose story has terrifying parallels to Anna’s own…

     The Burning is not the first time I have come to this author but it is my first time experiencing her fiction work. Previously having read her damming indictment of modern misogyny in Men who hate women. It was a book that really got under my skin and forced me to pay attention to topics that face us all. In coming to this book I was curious to see how and if any of the topics discussed in that book would come up in this. After all more often than not when an author transfers from one to the other the topics that fascinate them make there way across to the new one. This is made ever clearer to some extent by the blurb where you can see that this going to be a book that carries a message. I can already hear you say well it's hardly the first work of fiction to do so. And you would be right but in my experience, not so many of them manage to actually pull this off. There is a battle at play between the message and the story, so which one would win in Bate's novel?

      The Buring is one of those books that feel like a modern fairy tale. But not one of your Disney ones but more those of the Brothers Grimm type. Those ones that are supposed to serve as a cautionary tale, there go I but for the grace of god kind of deal. We are I believe all too aware of the beasts that social media and the internet have realised onto our world.  But it is also one that we all seem to take so lightly believing that whilst others may be unsafe we know exactly what we are doing. That those words or imagines we have put out there will be safe from those that would wish us harm. So when things break down and leaks and betrayals happen what we have is a modern-day witch hunt. And whilst we may at least here no longer burn women at the stake or drown them as proof of guilt, lives can still be destroyed by people who were never meant to see this so-called damning evidence. Moral reverence can be a truly wicked thing serving with a  vindictive vengeance when someone believes you have become a corrupter of that which they hold dear. More often than not shining a light on their own miss deads. A parol trick of miss direction to avoid that baying mob.

     This would seem is only amplified when inject into the world of teenagers. This need to so desperately fit in causing them to lash out at any difference. Trying in some desperate way to ensure their place is safe within the herd.  Unfroutanly it is Anna who this time must face this crashing of waves meant to destroy her. A girl hoping for a fresh start away from a past she desperately wished to forget. And it works well within the narrative as the author builds each new revelation. Bates has created a hero that in a relatively short space of time we can care about. She is someone that you could easily know and as such want to protect from what is about to occur. A feat that is clearly much easier said than done. But the clever thing here is that she also manages to make us care about Maggie her hero from the past as well. In seeing how much Anna comes to care for her fate so do we. Both becoming intertwined in our minds. Similar social betrayals all be it with very different outcomes. Sadly some things never change in a world that it would seem is set up to do exactly that. 

     Whilst I think I'm not really the target audience for this book it was still one that I enjoyed reading.  She has managed to bring across a good many points from her previous book in a way that might be a bit more easily accessible to a younger audience. It asks us questions about how we treat others and when faced with moral dilemmas do we side with the oppressed and strive for a better world or do we simply slip back into the herd and amplify the harassment being suffered?