Review: An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

This book tells the story of a young man who accidentally burns down the Emily Dickinson House, killing two people in the process. He goes to jail and when he is released, he starts a new life with a wife and kids, telling them that his parents are dead so there will be no intermixing of his old life and his new. The son of the people he killed comes to see him and from here it’s a downhill tumble for Sam, our main character. His old life comes back to haunt him and it messes up his new life in permanent and devastating ways. 

I didn’t really like this book. It was okay, but I had hoped for so much more. First off, I have recently found out that I don’t like stories told in the first person. I’ve never liked them, but I only realized why, while reading this book alongside “Camille” by Alxandre Dumas fils, which is also told in the first person. We only get the story from one point of view, and if that point of view isn’t especially discerning, but rather bumbling and confused (as in this book) it makes for frustrating reading. 

Sam is what he calls a bumbler. Bad things seem to happen to him through no fault of his own (he feels) and when he does things to try and make it better it almost always backfires. Like when he sets out to investigate the fires that start cropping up all over the area, targeting writers’ homes and pointing to him as a suspect. Rather than doing any good he manages to incriminate himself in a number of ways. I found this really frustrating. Can one man really make that many bad decisions? 

I also didn’t really like the way the story was told. There was a lot of foreshadowing in the veins of “I would come to regret that later, as you’ll see” or “that was a mistake too, as you will soon see” etc. That just isn’t really my jam. 

I mainly kept reading to see who actually did burn down the houses, but even that was kind of a disappointment. The culprit seems to come in from the wings, just in time to wrap up the story, but being presented so late that the reader isn’t really invested in this revelation. Or at least I wasn’t. 

I gave this book 2 stars out of 5.