An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2007: In An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New Englan, the quirkiest title for a book since Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Brock Clarke lights up the page with the chronicle of a man who, as a teenager, accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, killing two people. ("It's probably enough to say that in the Massachusetts Mt. Rushmore of big gruesome tragedy, there are the Kennedys, and Lizzie Borden and her ax, and the burning witches at Salem, and then there's me.") After serving ten years in prison for the crime, Sam Pulsifer moves on with his life, but the emergence of a copycat who's turning New England's literary landmarks to ash puts Sam back in the spotlight and on a quest for the truth. Comparisons to The World According to Garp and A Confederacy of Dunces may be bold, but this heartfelt, funny, and highly entertaining tale promises to be Brock Clarke's breakout book for certain. --Brad Thomas Parsons

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Clarke's fourth book (after the story collection Carrying the Torch) is the delightfully dark story of Sam Pulsifer, the accidental arsonist and murderer narrator who leads readers through a multilayered, flame-filled adventure about literature, lies, love and life. Growing up in Amherst, Mass., with an editor for a father and an English teacher for a mother, Sam was fed endless stories that fueled (literally and figuratively) the rest of his life. Thus, the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction, story and reality become the landscape for amusing and provocative adventures that begin when, at age 18, Sam accidentally torches the Emily Dickinson Homestead, killing two people. After serving 10 years, Sam tries to distance himself from his past through college, employment, marriage and fatherhood, but he eventually winds up back in his parents' home, separated from his wife and jobless. When more literary landmarks go up in flames, Sam is the likely suspect, and his determination to find the actual arsonist uncovers family secrets and more than a bit about human nature. Sam is equal parts fall guy and tour guide in this bighearted and wily jolt to the American literary legacy. (Sept.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 305 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1 edition (September 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565125517
• ISBN-13: 978-1565125513
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #411,452 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How one event can change many lives, September 9, 2007

By	Corinne H. Smith (Athol, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "What lie could I tell that would sound less like a lie than the truth?", August 27, 2007

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

(3.5 stars) The guilt of Sam Pulsifer, who describes himself as "the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, and who in the process killed two people, for which I spent ten years in prison," permeates this memoir of a lost life. Now in his late thirties, he is the happily married father of two children, a man who managed to graduate from college and get a terrific job as a packaging engineer. All is going well--until Thomas Coleman, the son of the couple who died in the Emily Dickinson House fire, about twenty years ago, appears on his doorstep. Coleman promises Sam that he will continue to pay for his crime in ways he never dreamed of.

Sam has never told his wife Anne Marie about his past, and she has no suspicions at all about his missing ten years, but before long, Sam is locked out of his house and living with his parents, and Thomas Coleman's car is parked in her driveway. Soon the homes of other writers--Edward Bellamy, Mark Twain, and Robert Frost--are torched. The police, of course, gravitate to Sam's door. As the crimes increase, Sam's domestic life---with his father, mother, and Anne Marie--becomes even more convoluted.

Author Brock Clarke does a masterful job of creating a breezy, conversational point of view, and his dialogue is natural and often filled with dark humor. As the crimes become more numerous, Clarke ratchets up both the suspense and the number of suspicious characters, leaving the reader hard-pressed to figure out how Sam will ever surmount his increasingly formidable challenges. As the cast of outrageous characters grows, Clarke keeps the humor high, and his use of absurdist details, wild scenes, and in-jokes about writers and their work keep the reader amused.

Though the novel is fun to read, it requires more than the usual amount of "willing suspension of disbelief." After ten years in prison, Sam is still a complete innocent about life, and his compulsion to lie, over and over again, makes him a protagonist with whom many readers will fail to identify. The fact that his wife has never been mildly curious about his ten "lost" years, about his education, or about his lack of long-time friends strains credulity, and the lives of his parents and the people he meets are so off-the-wall that any pretense of reality disappears.

The novel, however, requires a certain amount of reality to give the humor some context, and the reader must be able empathize with Sam in order to have the ending make sense and provide resolution. Filled with wacky scenes and oddball characters, the novel will amuse many readers, while its lack of subtlety will leave others asking "Is that all there is?" n Mary Whipple

20 of 24 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

By	S. J. Hall (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.