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Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone

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Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone Cover

ISBN13: 9780143121466
ISBN10: 0143121464
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Shirley Jackson meets The Twilight Zone in this riveting novel of supernatural horror.

A village on the Devil‘s Moor: a place untouched by time and shrouded in superstition. There is the grand manor house whose occupants despise the villagers, the small pub whose regulars talk of revenants, the old mill no one dares to mention. This is where four young friends come of age — in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face-to-face with the village‘s darkest secrets in this eerily dispassionate, astonishingly assured novel, infused with the spirit of the Brothers Grimm and evocative of Stephen King‘s classic short story “Children of the Corn” and the films The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke and Village of the Damned by Wolf Rilla.

Review:

"Can a terrible history generate a terrible present? That is the question posed by German-born author Kiesbye's dark second work of fiction (after Next Door Lived a Girl), composed of linked stories set in an archetypal rural German town in what seems to be the immediate postwar period. As in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, the vague setting heightens the narrative tension, as Christian, first, provides us with a framing device in the funeral of Anke, one of a group of young friends now elderly and distant. Each tells their story in flashback, a perspective that suits the delicate prose. Extraordinary things happened to the villagers 40 years earlier. Some are tinged with the supernatural — a traveling carnival worker hints at mysterious origins; an annual cooking contest ends badly — and some are truly horrifying: incest, child murder, and a father's brutal act of violence that leaves permanent scars. Why are these things happening in Hemmersmoor? Are tales of witches and curses to be believed? Or does the real reason lie at the end of the railroad tracks? Too subtle to be lurid yet too spooky for comfort, this book should appeal to readers of psychological fiction and literary tales of the supernatural. Agent: Markus Hoffmann, Regal Literary." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review:

"[A] wicked novel....Stunning....[There is a] quiet, unnerving effect [to] Kiesbye’s Brothers Grimm–like prose....An episodic, poetic, nightmarish offspring of Grace Metalious’s Peyton Placeand Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes." Booklist

Review:

"Nearly always startling....Quietly savage....Clinically dispassionate and chilling....Smack[s] of shades of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King....In an age when ‘torture porn’ still makes regular returns to the multiplex every Halloween, it’s worth being reminded that novelists, especially gifted ones, can make the trespasses we inflict on others just as ghastly as any chain-saw massacre." Kirkus Reviews

Synopsis:

Shirley Jackson meets The Twilight Zone in this riveting novel of supernatural horror

A village on the Devil‘s Moor: a place untouched by time and shrouded in superstition. There is the grand manor house whose occupants despise the villagers, the small pub whose regulars talk of revenants, the old mill no one dares to mention. This is where four young friends come of age—in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face-to-face with the village‘s darkest secrets in this eerily dispassionate, astonishingly assured novel, infused with the spirit of the Brothers Grimm and evocative of Stephen King‘s classic short story “Children of the Corn” and the films The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke and Village of the Damned by Wolf Rilla. 

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About the Author

Stefan Kiesbye has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. Born on the German coast of the Baltic Sea, he studied in Buffalo, New York, and now lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and is the arts editor of Absinthe: New European Writing.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
hadleys1, January 1, 2013 (view all comments by hadleys1)
I loved this book. The story is very chilling and disturbing.In a way it reminded me of the film "the White Ribbon".
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literaladdiction, September 25, 2012 (view all comments by literaladdiction)
Our Review by LITERAL ADDICTION's Pack Alpha - Michelle L. Olson:

Stefan Kiesbye takes the reader on a dark and twisted journey in Your House is on Fire, Your Children All Dead.

The book is written in differing points of view from each of the main characters. It's almost like a connected collection of short stories in that way, and each overlap slightly in regards to timeframe.

Written with beautiful prose rife with simile and metaphor, the story covers the disturbing reminiscence of 5 children growing up in rural Germany and the horror that is the human psyche.

It was an unsettling and beautifully written nostalgic horror show full of emotion.

LITERAL ADDICTION gives Your House is on Fire, Your Children all Dead 3 1/2 Skulls. It was an enjoyable and disturbing read, but I'm not sure I'd read it a 2nd time.

An aside note: The press didn't really match up to the real deal. It was advertised as The Twilight Zone meets The Children of the Corn, meets the X-Files. Twilight Zone, maybe. The others... not so much, in my opinion anyway. One thing I will say though, the cover design is absolutely GENIUS (creepy looking child straight on, embossed with "If you tell on me you're dead" when you tilt it)! Loved it!
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780143121466
Author:
Kiesbye, Stefan
Publisher:
Penguin Books
Subject:
Suspense
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Popular Fiction-Suspense
Edition Description:
Trade Paper
Publication Date:
20120931
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
from 12
Language:
English
Pages:
208
Dimensions:
7.82 x 5.22 x 0.57 in 0.34 lb
Age Level:
from 18
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Related Subjects

Featured Titles » Literature
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
Fiction and Poetry » Popular Fiction » Suspense
History and Social Science » Politics » General
History and Social Science » World History » General

Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$10.50 In Stock
Product details 208 pages Penguin Books - English 9780143121466 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "Can a terrible history generate a terrible present? That is the question posed by German-born author Kiesbye's dark second work of fiction (after Next Door Lived a Girl), composed of linked stories set in an archetypal rural German town in what seems to be the immediate postwar period. As in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, the vague setting heightens the narrative tension, as Christian, first, provides us with a framing device in the funeral of Anke, one of a group of young friends now elderly and distant. Each tells their story in flashback, a perspective that suits the delicate prose. Extraordinary things happened to the villagers 40 years earlier. Some are tinged with the supernatural — a traveling carnival worker hints at mysterious origins; an annual cooking contest ends badly — and some are truly horrifying: incest, child murder, and a father's brutal act of violence that leaves permanent scars. Why are these things happening in Hemmersmoor? Are tales of witches and curses to be believed? Or does the real reason lie at the end of the railroad tracks? Too subtle to be lurid yet too spooky for comfort, this book should appeal to readers of psychological fiction and literary tales of the supernatural. Agent: Markus Hoffmann, Regal Literary." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
"Review" by , "[A] wicked novel....Stunning....[There is a] quiet, unnerving effect [to] Kiesbye’s Brothers Grimm–like prose....An episodic, poetic, nightmarish offspring of Grace Metalious’s Peyton Placeand Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes."
"Review" by , "Nearly always startling....Quietly savage....Clinically dispassionate and chilling....Smack[s] of shades of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King....In an age when ‘torture porn’ still makes regular returns to the multiplex every Halloween, it’s worth being reminded that novelists, especially gifted ones, can make the trespasses we inflict on others just as ghastly as any chain-saw massacre."
"Synopsis" by ,
Shirley Jackson meets The Twilight Zone in this riveting novel of supernatural horror

A village on the Devil‘s Moor: a place untouched by time and shrouded in superstition. There is the grand manor house whose occupants despise the villagers, the small pub whose regulars talk of revenants, the old mill no one dares to mention. This is where four young friends come of age—in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face-to-face with the village‘s darkest secrets in this eerily dispassionate, astonishingly assured novel, infused with the spirit of the Brothers Grimm and evocative of Stephen King‘s classic short story “Children of the Corn” and the films The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke and Village of the Damned by Wolf Rilla. 
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