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Slow Burn

Slow Burn follows the story of Isobel della Fortuna, party regular, society member, illegitimate daughter of a powerful man. As Isobel struggles to find security and belonging in the Manila scene of the Marcos-era mid-eighties, we glimpse a culture that is brilliant in its horrific glory, although at the brink of extinction.

"Murray's tightly wound, efficient, pungent prose and milieu of tragic decadence is reminiscent of Hemingway, but with a feminine spin."—Booklist

"This is a despairing but oddly companionable book that could have been written by Jean Rhys is she'd been a member of the Imelda Marcos Crowd. Bratty, decadent, maddening, yes, but also compulsively readable, impeccably written and convincing. Sabina Murray has revealed to me a world that I hadn't even suspected might exist."—Edmund White

"Isobel della Fortuna's journey into darkness unfolds with a steady lucidity of focus many a mature novelist will envy. Sabina Murray is a gifted writer, a true natural, one who would tell a good story if she had always lived in a box. Fortunately for us, she grew up in Manila, an exotic, troubled city Murray has the depth of perception to love and hate in equal parts. Slow Burn is grounded in a world of contrasts only an insider could know, not just wealth and poverty, corruption and squalor (though Murray has always an eye on these), but beauty and pathos as well."—Valerie Martin