The Day Before the Fire

by Miranda France

'Intelligent, insightful, enlightening and gripping' ML Stedman, author of The Light Between OceansWhen fire devastates Turney House, London’s finest stately home, the immaculate Lady Alexandra Marchant demands that everything be restored exactly as it was ‘the day before the fire’. Every charred remnant must be salvaged. Even the famous chandelier will be pieced back together into a flawless reconstruction.But is it possible, or even desirable, to resurrect the past? And why do we care so much about it? Critics say the restored Turney can never be more than an elegant fake; Lady Alexandra Marchant says Turney’s doors, its café and gift shop, must be re-opened to the paying public as soon as possible.Ros Freeman is called in as part of the effort, to Turney’s tented village of carvers, gilders, plasterers and stonemasons. Ros loves her work as a paper restorer. She considers herself an expert in uncovering the past, layer by layer, to bring out the truth. And yet in her personal life there are corners, shadows, ghosts, she fails to see. Until a discovery in Turney’s Rose Room challenges her to look again.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2015

About the author

Miranda France is an award winning writer and translator. She has written two highly acclaimed travel books, Bad Times in Buenos Aires and Don Quixote's Delusions. France has won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. She has translated Argentine writers including Alberto Manguel, Claudia Piñeiro and Liliana Heker. She grew up on a farm, not unlike the farm that is featured in her first novel, That Summer at Hill Farm, but now lives in London with her husband and two children.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the main character in this story to be rather unlikeable, selfish and singleminded in her pursuit of her happiness, at the expense of all others. The material describing restoration of a stately home was interesting to learn, but unsatisfactory as nothing was resolved and that part of the story was left unfinished, as was the nonexistent ending of the book.
For me, this was one of those books that feels like the author got bored or ran out of time or deadlines and just cut the story off well before any resolutions were made.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Day Before the Fire is a novel about conservation, both of wallpaper and of memories, and how both can be done well or poorly. Whilst I didn't really connect with Ros, the paper conservator brought in to help the Marchant family restore the fire-ravished Turney House, the dual storylines of house conservation and family memories was cleverly devised, and populated with some vivid characters. Overall, I left feeling that plot threads had been abandoned for the sake of the ending, but I certainly learned a lot about wallpaper and eighteenth century craftsmanship.

[Otone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hackneyed plot with lacklustre characters.

[fliss heywood · Rating 2 out of 5]

‘nothing ought to matter that much. you can’t have everything in life and what you can’t have shouldn’t be so important’

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of restoration and learning about secrets. A stately home is destroyed by fire and the brief from the owners is to restore everything to 'the day before the fire'. Maybe it went into too much detail of restoration of wall papers and the history of patterns for a fictional work, but I found all that fascinating.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit too much detail on restoring wallpaper for me but a good yarn.