Book Report: An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England

An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England
By Brock Clarke

Book Description:
As a teenager, it was never Sam Pulsifer's intention to torch an American landmark, and he certainly never planned to kill two people in the blaze. To this day, he still wonders why that young couple was upstairs in bed in the Emily Dickinson House after hours.

After serving ten years in prison for his crime, Sam is determined to put the past behind him. He finishes college, begins a career, falls in love, gets married, has two adorable kids, and buys a home. His low-profile life is chugging along quite nicely until the past comes crashing through his front door.

As the homes of Robert Frost, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even a replica of Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond, go up in smoke, Sam becomes the number one suspect. Finding the real culprit is the only way to clear his name—but sometimes there's a terrible price to pay for the truth.

First sentence:
I, Sam Pulsifer, am 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 and, as letters from scholars of American literature tell me, for which I will continue to pay a high price long into the not-so-sweet hereafter.


Obviously, this is book you'd have trouble reading half-asleep. Long, witty sentences dominate much of the narrative, and if you can keep up, you'll enjoy the humor. Even the title is an attention-grabber--be prepared to do some explaining if reading this in public. Clarke is an expert at sarcasm and far-fetched situations, and this odd little story turned out fairly well.

The protag is a pretty normal guy, who is just trying to get his life back on track after a huge detour. Fate, however, has sniffed him out and seems determined to send poor Sam straight back to jail. Not long after completing his sentence for the Emily Dickinson fiasco, the homes of other authors start to burn down. Suspicions rise, and Sam is desperate to clear his name. His parents have disowned him, but he crashes their house anyway after the son of the two that died in the Dickinson fire shows up on Sam's front step, wanting revenge. Soon Sam's father shares a secret--a box of letters that were addressed to Sam while he was in jail, letters of support, letters of request that he burn down other author's homes, even sighting the reasons (motives). While his wife slips away to another man and his parent's nighttime antics continue to confuse him, Sam begins his own hunt for the real New England arsonist.

Sam is the deepest of all the characters, and has a few endearing, insightful moments--that unfortunately, kicked me right out of the story as the words echoed in my head.

"What are you thinking?" Anne Marie said finally. There was a weary, sighing quality to her voice, which I took for simple human fatigue, but which might have been resignation. I wish I'd paid more attention to Anne Marie back then, but I didn't. Oh, why didn't I? Why don't we listen to the people we love? Is it because we have only so much listening in us, and so many very important things to tell ourselves?

**

When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply another word for doing something different from what you were already doing--or maybe greatness is the thing we want to have to that other people will want to have us, or maybe greatness is merely the grail for our unhappy, striving selves, the thing we think we need but don't and can't get anyway.


Good writing, but is lacking that intangible 'heartbeat' that makes this a truly wonderful story.
Two out of five stars