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22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
`Can a story be good only if it produces an effect?', June 21, 2008
This review is from: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England: A Novel (Hardcover)
This question is quoted from a scene within the novel itself. This story certainly produces an effect on me, but the effect it produces is not one that I consider to be `good'. It is undoubtedly well-written but it is infuriating. Most of the characters are either incomplete or utterly inadequate. That could be okay: there is a rich subterranean vein of satire flowing just below the surface and just one reliable viewpoint would be enough to make this work for me.
I kept reading, through to the end, in the hope that Sam Pulsifer, the narrator, would stop observing his life and start taking responsibility for the living of it. Or, perhaps, we'd get another viewpoint which would add a dimension of contextual sense. The bit that did appeal to me (and for which I will allocate two of the three stars) was the notion that a number of different characters thought that the burning of various houses occupied by prominent writers in New England might in some way improve their own lives. This potentially clever idea was essentially lost to me in the bumbling fiasco otherwise known as the life of Sam Pulsifer.
Of course, there is an alternative explanation. This might be an incredibly clever book which only a true literary aficionado will enjoy. Each reader will find a different book between the same covers. All things are possible.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Complex Sentences, Mystery, Coming of Age, and Musings on Life, September 25, 2007
This review is from: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England: A Novel (Hardcover)
Think a mini version of Marisha's Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and you'll understand the world that awaits you in Clarke's book. Like Pessl's novel, Clarke's novel has an intellectually sophisticated narrator, who utilizes a wealth of complexly constructed sentences to tell his multilayered tale of coming of age and attempts to solve two mysteries, and who has interwoven all throughout the text countless observations and aphorisms about life.
Specifically, our narrator Sam Pulsifer is trying to unravel the mysterious surrounding his parents' lies and strange behavior and who is attempting to, and then starts succeeding at, burning down homes of famous authors around the New England area. The end result of Pulsifer solving both these mysteries is that he is baptized by obliteration into adulthood; the world he thought he knew disintegrates before his eyes, and he begins to attempt to atone for all the years of not taking responsibility for his actions.
Now granted, Clarke's novel isn't quite the masterpiece that Special Topics in Calamity Physics is, however that does not diminish the fact that this is a novel you should considering reading because it still is very entertaining and moving; it is a well paced jaunt, told with humor, charm, wit, sadness, self-depreciation, and tinged with heartbreak, about a topic I think we can all agree is quite perplexing - Life.
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29 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How one event can change many lives, September 9, 2007
This review is from: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England: A Novel (Hardcover)
Sam Pulsifer is a bumbler. And in true bumbler fashion, he doesn't know he *is* one until he meets white-collar criminals in prison who scoff at such individuals. Sam is an innocent soul: a blissfully naïve young man who accidentally starts a fire in an historic house and accidentally kills a married couple secretly meeting inside it. This is his story, which he begins for us after his 10-year incarceration and the resumption of his life. The narrative is conveyed in first person by Sam himself, written at a time in the future when hindsight is 20/20 and he can keep us interested by providing forecasts in regular asides: "This turned out, much later, to be something of a mistake on my part, but how was I to know that at the time? How are we supposed to recognize our mistakes before they become mistakes? Where is the book that can teach us *that*?"
Sam goes to college, gets a good job, marries well and has two children before the big trouble starts: someone else begins to set fire to other historic homes in New England, and fingers start pointing once again at Sam. But we readers know he didn't do it, don't we? Having read lots of literature in his lifetime but not detective stories, Sam doesn't quite know how to go about investigating the situation and clearing his name. In Sam's case, ignorance is not necessarily bliss; and he unwittingly gets himself in deeper trouble as he goes along. But at least he realizes his limitations: "The truth is that the world is full of bumblers exactly like you, and to think that you're special is just one more thing you've bumbled." Low self-esteem is one of Sam's personal demons.
What sounds like serious business is really a comic tragedy, with many humorous moments found in Sam's assessment of what Life throws at him. Unlike other reviewers, I found Sam to be a likable character. His stream of consciousness over-analysis of every encounter is the kind of thing that really *does* buzz through our minds; we just don't write it all down like he did. And if we took the time to record it, it would sound just as immature and surreal and ridiculous as what we read in these pages.
Author Brock Clarke is obviously familiar enough with the region (Amherst, the Pioneer Valley, the greater Springfield area) that he can portray it realistically and poke subdued fun at it at the same time. Local readers will laugh out loud more than once. At least *I* did.
A glance at the book title will no doubt panic every director of every historic home across the country. "Yikes! Why would he write this kind of thing and put this terrible idea into people's heads?" they might lament. Well, just as most mystery readers don't run right out and commit murder, most readers of AN ARSONIST'S GUIDE won't be inclined to torch the nearest entry on the National Register of Historic Places. And even so: I can't think of another title that would be appropriate for this book. An enjoyable memoir of a fictitious character who deserves better than his due.
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