My House Is On Fire is a collection of short stories, which consider life under an authoritarian regime - that of Pinochet's Chile - and in particular, how the constraints of such an existence interact with family and other loyalties. The first story, 'Family Circle', is about a conscript whose father despises the uniform he is wearing. Some of the stories are genuinely chilling - in the title story a child almost gives her family away because she doesn't understand the seriousness of what she hears, and in 'Putamadre' a group of navy sailors encounter anti-Chilean protests in San Francisco. Others have a funny/sardonic edge - in 'Lonely Hearts Column' a woman doesn't know whether she has lost her husband's affection to another woman, or to resistance to the regime, in 'Trademark Territory' Dorfman imagines a doorbell which will keep the poor away from the doors of the wealthy.

I enjoyed this collection, with its range of content and style. ( )