The Fireman

I've read all three of Joe Hill's novels--Heart-Shaped Box, NOS4A2U, and now The Fireman, and I wonder if success has spoiled him. The Fireman is another example of a good book that has hidden inside a much fatter one, over 700 pages. I know Joe Hill is his own man and changed his name to establish his own reputation away from his father, Stephen King, but like his old man, these books are getting too long.

The Fireman is not really horror, as all of the bad news is biological. A spore, dubbed Dragonscale, has infected the populace. It causes people to spontaneously combust. He has some fun with it using the names of real people: "Then Glenn Beck burned to death on his Internet program, right in front of his chalkboard, burned so hot his glasses fused to his face, and after that most of the news was less about who did it and more about how not to catch it."

The main character is Harper Willowes, a nurse, who works tirelessly at her local hospital. Somehow she catches it, and this sends her husband, a failed writer of course, into a tizzy. She ends up in hiding with others of those with the spore in an old camp, which becomes something like a cult. Those with the spore have come to like it, and can almost control it by singing. One fellow who can really control it, making fire shoot out of his hand, is John Rookwood, known as the Fireman.

Hill seems to be saying several things at once. Of course, the Dragonscale resembles other plagues, and the isolation of those who suffer from it, like AIDS. But the camp full of people splinters into factions. The ostensible leader, Father Storey, is a fair-minded man, but when he is conked on the head and goes into a coma, his daughter, Carol, becomes something of a tyrant.

Parts of the book are very good, especially the finale, which features the unlikely name of Martha Quinn, MTV V-J. “She came back from the eighties to save mankind. Martha Quinn is our only hope.”

But there's something amiss here. I could never buy into the book. The first thing I would do if I had the disease would be to stay in water most of the time--Hill never says if that would work (I would think things wouldn't burn underwater). His use of Harper's husband and a radio broadcaster called the Marlboro Man as villains is heavy-handed. And there's just so many scenes of people lighting up like matches. He also has a the somewhat amateurish way of obvious foreshadowing at the end of chapters, such as: “We’ll have to take it slow from here on out,” the Fireman said. He had that one wrong"

Like his dad, Hill makes great use of popular culture. In addition to Glenn Beck and Martha Quinn, there are many other mentions of it. My favorite line is: “Men who love the Stones are fixated on cock."

I like about half of The Fireman, and it should have been about half the size.