An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes in New England

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

by Brock Clarke

2007

303 pages

ISBN: 978-1-56512-551-3

So this book was recommended to me by Dan during my epic birthday recommend-a-thon. I admit that I had given it the once over a couple of times when it appeared in various bookstore displays, the title is clearly an eye-catcher, but I resisted the urge to purchase until I was gong wild with birthday money.

I want to say good things here about the Barnes and Noble manager that was working at the store I went to on my birthday. After getting recommendations from tons of friends, looking up a little more about the books that they had suggested, deciding which I was really dying to read, and making a list... I left said list on my desk. I went up to customer service and told him the title (or something close to the title) for 3 or 4 books that I was looking for and then, after we had walked around the store, hunting for and finding one of them on sale, 2 others that I managed to remember while we were looking. Not only did he find them all for me, but he told me NOT to buy his trade paperback copy of this book, because he was sure that I would be able to get the remaindered hardcover on the website for $5. Now I'm sure that it was obvious to him as we walked around and added to my enormous pile of books that I am the type of customer that Barnes and Noble wants to keep happy, but still, he didn't have to do that. And he certainly didn't have to come find me when I was browsing to give me a little slip of paper with the ISBN for the cheaper edition so that I would be able to find it right away when I went to the site. He was great. So thanks to him.

Anyway, I found some parts of this book extremely amusing, and others rather annoying. Overall, Clarke has succeeded in creating a cast of characters so wildly unlikable that they're interesting, headed by a protagonist who amazes you not in that he manages to mess up his own life so spectacularly, but more that he manages to do it so efficiently when he seems like such a "bumbler." Then Clarke takes these hapless, incapable, flawed people and places them a series of situations so insanely implausible, so absurd, that sometimes you can't help but shake your head in disbelief.

Yet most of it works. There are some things that don't, certainly; the dinner scene with Sams soon-to-be-ex-in-laws got past my last nerve for example, but most of it is really quite good. Perhaps a bit overplotted, and the turn towards tragedy at the end felt a little bit forced, but certainly worth it for the shiningly funny moments.

Apparently this is Clarke's 4th novel, at least according to the review that Dan sent with his recommendation. That reviewer thought that it seemed like a debut, and I have to agree... although for different reasons. For me this book was rough around the edges, but showed some real promise... the kind of thing that you expect from someone with raw talent who's just starting out. I'm not sure if Clarke, who apparently teaches just up the street, should take that as a compliment or an insult.