"...[Foran] has created a novel which is both a compelling political thriller and a disturbing mediation on morality and responsibility. House on Fire is a gripping, thought provoking, and emotionally affecting novel, that, in elegant, evocative prose, asks the question: can one be a witness to atrocities and remain neutral, or is there a moral obligation to get involved that transcends political and national boundaries?"

— Books in Canada
 

"From the novel's title to its revelations about hidden identity, House on Fire is designed as an intense, gripping reading experience."

— Quill and Quire
 

"An enthralling, complex novel, weaving fiction, fact, dream and reality. It is a book that keeps the reader off balance with unexpected events and inventive structure and is, at the end, haunting and affecting."

— National Post
 

"A kind of literary detective tale.... Houe on Fire doesn't put a foot wrong.... If there's any justice, it will place Charles Foran firmly in the top tier of Canadian writers."

— Montreal Gazette
 

"Superb... A tour de force, eerily and freshly detailed, complex in its approach and resolution of its many concerns, one of which is the inquiry of the West into the affairs of the East, portrayed here as an insidious interaction with unpredictable effects.... House on Fire is also formally innovative, in that the novel swirls around an inner fiction, the short story Ocean by Tashi Delag, placed adroitly between the novel's rising action and its equally unsettling denouement.... the story is a minor masterpiece of controlled sarcasm and a metafictional comment on Foran's characters.... In House on Fire, Charles Foran's imagination is, if not infinite, then galvanic and fascinating; he has succeeded in crafting a novel both serious and insidious in its effects."

— Malahat Review