Books & Literature

Book Review: Our House is on Fire, by Malena & Beata Ernman, Svante and Greta Thunberg

BIOGRAPHY: This is the story of a family led to confront a crisis they had never foreseen: daughters with mental illness and a planet in peril.

An interesting biography of a family who has been thrown into the world spotlight, peppered with climate information.
3.5

Who in the world has not heard of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg? She is a young woman who is doing everything she can to understand the truth about the climate crisis and making sure the world hears what she has to say. Winner of numerous awards including the International Children’s Peace Prize (2019), Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity (2020) and Time Person of the Year (2019), her name has become synonymous with the fight to save our planet.

Born in 2003 in Stockholm, Sweden to Opera Singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg, Greta has one younger sister named Beata.

The Ernman/Thunberg family decided to write a book together. Malena, the mother, has written the bulk of the book, but with input from the rest of the family. It was first published in Swedish in 2018 with the name Scenes from the Heart but has now been published in English under the name Our House is on Fire.

Our House is on Fire has 108 very short scenes (chapters) and is split into four sections. Each scene and section have been named. Section One mostly tells us about the early years, when the daughters of Svelte and Malena changed from children who were “just a little bit different” to non-eating, non-speaking, screaming children who needed constant supervision from exhausted parents.

We read about a family in crisis as Svante and Malena struggle with two daughters, both who are eventually diagnosed with mental illnesses. After many months of doctors’ appointments and parents being called to the school office and apologising for their daughters’ behaviour, both girls were eventually diagnosed just before puberty. Greta suffers with depression, Asperger Syndrome, high-functioning autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism. Beata with ADHD, elements of Asberger’s, OCD and ODD – way more than any parent or child should have to cope with.

Our House is on Fire does not just deal with mental illness. The family is passionate about the climate crisis, women’s equality, animal cruelty and the failing school system. But this story is mostly about a family coping with mental illness and how their combined efforts on behalf of our planet and our future became world headlines.

Approximately half the scenes are about the family adjusting to life and dealing with issues they feel are very important. The other half is full of information about how we are failing as a human race and what needs to be done. Scene 42 has Svante worried about the book getting too heavy. Greta’s pragmatic answer is: this book is about the climate and it’s supposed to be boring. I don’t care. The readers will just have to put up with it.

This book is heavy in places and at times becomes almost a lecture on how the save the world, but this is their message and they are passionate. They are doing everything in their power to try and save our planet from extinction. They highlight many unknown facts but mostly it is about a family who live their beliefs, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks of them; a family who has to overcome many difficulties just to survive. A family who love each other unconditionally.

As Svante says: If we’re going to do a book about the climate, we must first and foremost communicate that we find ourselves in an acute crisis, and what that crisis involves. Hope is extremely important, but it will come later. When your house is on fire you don’t start by sitting down at the kitchen table and telling the family how nice it will be once you’ve finished renovating and building the add-ons. When your house is on fire you call 999, you waken everyone you can and you crawl towards the front door.

Our House is on Fire ends when the world first becomes aware of Greta Thunberg – the day she decides to go on strike.

Reviewed by Sue Mauger

Distributed by: Penguin Books Australia
Released: March 2020
RRP: $32.99 trade paperback, $39.99 hardcover $14.99 eBook

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