AFTER THE FIRE

Expanded from her series of articles in the Newark Star-Ledger, Pulitzer Prize finalist Fisher’s first book follows freshman roommates, badly burned in the January 2000 Seton Hall University dorm fire, as they recover and rebuild their lives.

Writing in a straightforward, reportorial style, the author chronicles the ordeal of Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos, illustrates their lighthearted personalities and loving friendship and rounds out the picture by including the perspectives of their families, the head of the burn unit at Saint Barnabas Hospital and the burn nurses. This action-driven, summarizing approach works well for straight narrative, but falls short in examining the complex psychological difficulties Shawn and Alvaro suffered after experiencing such a massive trauma so early in their lives. Essential questions are answered simplistically. What is it like for a carefree, handsome young man to be suddenly disfigured and to lose his youthful sense of invincibility? It’s difficult, the author tells us. How do parents cope when their beloved sons might die? Big surprise: Well-adjusted people do better than anxious ones. The author glosses over an unplanned pregnancy and the undercurrent of class conflict in the attendant arson case. Fisher’s heroic portraits of Shawn and Alvaro are similarly airbrushed; more recognition of their human fallibility would increase the text’s realism and impact. The strongest material deals with Alvaro’s 17-year-old girlfriend Angie, too young to deal well with the changes his injuries bring. Fisher’s account of their devolving relationship enhances readers’ emotional understanding of the fire’s effect on its victims in a way that the rest of the book does not.

Dramatic but shallow.