Join us on Wednesday, March 3rd at 7pm as we welcome Max Porter to the shop for the release of Burn and Rave! Save the date! RSVP is not required, but appreciated. Seats are first come, first served and can be guaranteed with the purchase of a book or a $3 sliding scale donation to our program.

About the book

BURN AND RAVE is a virtuoso performance—by turns bracing, funny, and gloriously polyphonic. At its heart is Lynette: a sixty-something (somewhat famous) former actress, best known for her roles in Downtown Abbey-esque British TV costume dramas. She’s cantankerous, cancerous, absolutely bloody furious. But she’s one of those characters you can’t help falling in love with; a great anti-hero for our dire times. When we meet Lynette—hungover at a hotel in a dreary English seaside town—she is on a mission to exorcise the ghosts of her past.

Written in the form of a screenplay that takes place mostly in her head, where she’s writer, director and star, we’re given a front row seat of Lynette in all her ferocity, turbulence, and charisma. There are flashbacks, voiceovers, cameos from ninth-century monks and twenty-first century doctors, ghosts and long-lost family members, and Lynette stopping halfway to ask: “Sorry, is it my line?” and the director yelling CUT! A tender, nuanced portrayal of the interiority of a dynamic, galvanizing, and brilliant woman, BURN AND RAVE defies genre, revealing the astonishing ways fiction can illuminate the messy, strange and hopeful business of being alive.

Max Porter’s BURN AND RAVE will make you laugh out loud as often as it will break your heart, and it will be the most fun you’ll have inside a novel all year. We can’t wait for you to read this extraordinary novel from one of the most beloved and most “utterly unique” (New York Magazine) writers of our time.

About the author

Max Porter is an award-winning novelist whose books have been translated into thirty-eight languages. His debut, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, was a Sunday Times Top 100 Novel of the 21st Century and became a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch as well as a stage production starring Cillian Murphy at the St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, where it was a New York Times Critics Pick. His Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling novel, Lanny, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and the Wainwright Prize. His most recent novel, Shy, was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller, and inspired the Netflix film Steve, for which Porter wrote the BAFTA-nominated screenplay. Prior to his writing career, he was a bookseller at Daunt Books in London, where he won the Young Bookseller of the Year Award, and the Editorial Director at Granta. In 2020, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is currently writer in residence in a UK prison, Associate Artist at The Southbank Centre, and chaired the judging panel for the International Booker Prize 2025. Porter lives in Bath, England with his family.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• Check-in for the event will begin at 6:45pm.
• Priced ticket holders (Book+seat, Pay it Forward!+seat) will have seats held until 7pm. Arrivals after 7pm will be allowed admission, but seats are not guaranteed.
• General admission ticket holders will be offered seats at check-in on a first-come, first-served basis. May be standing room.
• Space at the door on the day of the event is usually available, but not guaranteed.
• Books will be for sale on the night of the event.
• ADA accessible. Bathrooms on site during event hours.
• Events typically end between 8:30 and 9pm.
• Questions? tickets@booksmith.com