The Nature of Fragile Things
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The Nature of Fragile Things is historical fiction that’s a lil spicy because the narrator is a mail-order bride. Sophie, an Irish immigrant, is looking to press reset on her life. She travels to San Francisco to marry a man she has never met, fulfilling a maternal vacancy for a widow with a mute young daughter. Red flags abound, and it reaches a dramatic head during the 1906 SF earthquakes. Sophie isn’t real, but the earthquakes were– they killed 3,000 people (making it the deadliest earthquake in US history) and destroyed 80% of the city because of the ensuing fires. One woman tried to make breakfast after the quake but didn’t realize the extent of the damage to her chimney and gas lines, so a fire erupted in her kitchen that then spread 30 blocks, destroying homes, a college, and City Hall. It was later dubbed The Ham and Eggs Fire, which is good branding, albeit bad vibes.
Anyway, the setting is an asset to the book. The aforementioned red flags are dealt with in ways appropriate to the customs of the time, which was both fascinating and infuriating to me because I wanted some people to tell other people off without all the niceties. Bad guys were able to get away with more, taking advantage of society’s decorum. It was also interesting to watch them have to navigate the earthquake aftermath without cellphones. Bunch of suckers!
SF is a cool place, and I liked the references to streets and locations that are still there today. The author successfully transported me in time and place and then layered in a psychological twist that I really didn’t see coming, almost like a historical fiction thriller, although the pacing doesn’t entirely fit with that description. That leads me to my con– it got tedious. Some stretches of time got unwarranted attention at the expense of juicer parts. For such a momentous event, the earthquake unfortunately seemed like a background actor– a trigger for the characters to address their own drama rather than a centerpiece of action, and I could have gone for more cellphoneless chaos instead. I also would have liked more insight into the narrator, Sophie. She had a lot of nuance to her, and her internal dialogue had more potential, so I felt like there was too much left on the table. Overall, in the moment, it satisfied some historical curiosity, kept me on my toes, and led to solid book club discussion, but it didn’t wow me or stick with me in any major way. It receives 3 out of 5 flames.
