Synopses & Reviews
How to Set a Fire and Why, Jesse Ball’s singular, blistering new novel, tells the story of a teenage girl who has lost everything—and will burn anything.
Lucia’s father is dead, her mother is in a mental hospital, and she’s living in a garage-turned-bedroom with her aunt. And now she’s been kicked out of school—again. Making her way through the world with only a book, a zippo lighter, a pocketful of stolen licorice, a biting wit, and the striking intelligence that she tries to hide, Lucia spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother and following the only rule that makes any sense to her: Don’t do things you aren’t proud of. But when she discovers that her new school has a secret Arson Club, she’s willing to do anything to be a part of it, and her life is suddenly lit up. As Lucia’s fascination with the Arson Club grows, her story becomes one of misguided friendship and, ultimately, destruction.
Review
"How to Set a Fire and Why is a rare and startling work. Days after I read it, I find that I can’t stop thinking about it, and what I’ve realized is that this is a book I will not forget. This is a harrowing, subtle, and absolutely electrifying novel." Emily St. John Mandel, bestselling author of Station Eleven
Review
"Jesse Ball began his writing career as a poet, which explains a lot. His novels Silence Once Begun and A Cure for Suicide are both spare and elliptical, frog-hopping from scene to scene, making stories that aren’t plot-driven into page-turners. How to Set a Fire and Why seems to be no exception; it’s told by a teenage protagonist who can’t manage to stay in school in spite of her knack for seeing straight through to the truth that underlies things. She’s a lovable misfit worth hanging out with." Maddie Crum, The Huffington Post
Review
"A troubled adolescent girl dreams of setting fire to the world. It starts with a stabbing and ends with a conflagration, and, in between, the novel never once telegraphs where it’s going… It’s never quite what you expected. In this stark epistolary novel, the author fully occupies the inner life of a teenage girl, Lucia Stanton… She’s not as profane as Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, but they share a certain aimlessness and cynicism about adults that rings true… A brilliant portrayal of a girl who’s quite aware of what she’s going throug" Kirkus Reviews
Review
"In Ball’s latest imaginative and provocative novel, Lucia seizes her place among American literature’s brainy, questioning, besieged, and determined young female narrators…Ball’s pitch-perfect voicing is mesmerizing as Lucia chronicles her experiences to help her make sense of her predicament. A pithy, deadpan-funny, scalpel-sharp, and, beneath her flinty adolescent bravura, deeply compassionate observer, Lucia recounts her increasingly harrowing misadventures and presents a fiery manifesto… Readers will share Ball’s adoration of this incisive and valiant young survivor from whom life cruelly subtracts nearly everything but her incandescent intellect, blazing wit, and radiant sense of justice." Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"The beautifully blunt narration of a gifted delinquent propels this excellent sixth novel…. Lucia details a philosophy that smartly parallels the novel’s own–namely, that writing literature is, like arson, an act of creation and destruction…. Thrilling…. A song of teenage heartbreak sung with a movingly particular sadness, a mature meditation on how actually saying something, not just speaking, is what most makes a voice human." Publishers Weekly (Starred, Boxed Review)
About the Author
Jesse Ball is the author of fourteen books, most recently the novel How to Set a Fire and Why. His works have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, won the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize, was long-listed for the National Book Award, and has been a fellow of the NEA, Creative Capital, and the Guggenheim Foundation.