Synopses & Reviews
Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel has come to the end of a very long and unusual journey, and for the second time in is life he has the time to think about all the things that have and have not come to pass.
The truth is, a lot of remarkable things have happened in Sam's life. He spent ten years in prison for accidentally burning down poet Emily Dickinson's house—and unwittingly killing two people in the process. He emerged at age twenty-eight and set about creating a new life—almost a new identity—for himself. He went to college, found love, got married, fathered two children, and made a new start—and then watched in almost silent awe as the vengeful past caught up with him, right at his own front door.
As, one by one, the homes of other famous New England writers are torched, Sam knows that he is most certainly not the guilty one. To prove his innocence, he sets out to uncover the identity of this literary-minded arsonist. What he discovers, and how he deals with the reality of his discoveries, is both hilariously funny and heartbreakingly sad. For, as Sam learns, the truth has a way of eluding capture, and then, when you finally get close enough to embrace it, it turns and kicks you in the ass.
In the league of such contemporary classics as A Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, Little Big Man, and The World According to Garp, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is an original and exciting work - a novel disguised as a memoir; a mystery that cloaks itself in humor; an artful piece of literature that bites the hand that breeds it. A heartbreaking story about truth and honesty and the damage they do, it's above all a massive piece of entertainment that will make you think and make you care.
Review
"It's nearly impossible not to care about and laugh with Sam. ...He appeals to the fool in everyone and comforts us in knowing that we're not alone."—Chicago Tribune
Review
"Sizzles." - The Washington Post Book World
Review
andquot;Funny, profound...A seductive book with a payoff on everyandnbsp; page.andquot;and#8212;People
Review
"Wildly, unpredictably funny... As cheerfully oddball as its title."—The New York Times The New York Times
Review
"Funny, profound...A seductive book with a payoff on every page."—People People Magazine
Review
"Brock Clarke is our generation's Richard Ford, destined to be as influential and as celebrated. And his arsonist, Sam Pulsifer, is an Everyman surburban nomad, a literary misadventurer who is as insightful and doomed as he is heartbreakingly hilarious. I love this book"—Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment
Review
"This is a sad, funny, absurd, and incredibly moving novel. Its comic mournnfulness, its rigorous, breakneck narrative, delight. . . . Clarke [has] given us a wonderful book about life, literature, and the anxieties of their influence."—Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land
Review
"While I was reading this dark, funny, tragic novel, I would look at the people around me and feel sorry for them because they weren't occupying the same world I was; they weren't living as I was, inside the compelling, off-kilter atmosphere of Brock Clarke's pages. This is the best book I’ve read in a long time." — Carolyn Parkhurst, author of The Dogs of Babel
Review
"[A] 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....Sam is equal parts fall guy and tour guide in this bighearted and wily jolt to the American literary legacy." Publishers Weekly
Review
"A serious novel that is often very funny and will be a page-turning pleasure for anyone who loves literature."—Kirkus Reviews Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Brock Clarke flames entire genres of fiction in this clever and often hilarious tale."—Paste magazine Paste Magazine
Review
"In the spectacularly titled An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, Brock Clarke gives us a sharp new novel that reads like a memoir, a scathing satire that reminds us of the horrors of truth-telling. . . . It's a crisp story that moves along like a detective novel. But what makes it come alive is Clarke's sharp wit, dropping funny, deadpan observations about suburbia . . . and literary life throughout the book. . . . Beyond the vicious satire, however, there is serious business in the Arsonist's Guide. Clarke has a lovely sense of the meanings that hide behind what we say and the contradictions of personality. An Arsonist's Guide is a smart novel about people who desperately need to reinvent themselves, perhaps without knowing who they were in the first place."--
—Associated Press Associated Press
Review
"A witty, intensely clever piece of writing that scrutinizes our relationship with stories and storytelling. . . . Clarke composes with panache, packing his pages with offbeat humor, vibrant characters, and tender scenes."--Utne Utne
Review
"A tenderhearted black comedy that's reminiscent of classic works like John Irving's The World According to Garp. . . . What makes An Arsonist's Guide such an engaging and wildly original work is the captivating voice of Sam Pulsifer . . . Like all of literature's most compelling characters, it's hard to say goodbye to him when we turn the final page."---Bookpage BookPage
Review
"As a title, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England has a lot to live up to. Happily, Brock Clarke's hilarious new novel makes good on its title and then some, with a loopily shambolic narrative as captivating as its feckless firebug narrator, Sam Pulsifer. . . . It's the perfect end-of-summer book, funny and sharp and smart enough to ease the transition from beach to boardroom. Just don't leave it near a pack of matches." --Village Voice Village Voice
Review
"Funny, profound . . . Larded with grabby aphorisms . . . memorable images and bittersweet epiphanies, Clarke's novel is an agile melding of faux-memoir and mystery. Spot-on timing gives it snap, and a rich sense of perversity . . . lends texture. It's a seductive book with a payoff on every page."
—People, 4 star "Critic's Choice" review People Magazine
Review
A "smart, witty novel-staged-as-memoir . . . Clarke nails the suburban landscape in high satiric fashion. . . . Beneath satiric pokes at suburban America, the memoir craze and literary culture in general (the very title of the book is a winking reference to a popular literary form), there is honest heart here. . . . It's a blast¬its story line rollicking and often absurd, its themes satisfyingly hefty. Clarke keeps the plot clipping along, each chapter launching you right into the next, and ultimately delivers an ending that upholds the intellectual comedy of the book and its themes (parent-child bonds, the consequences of mistakes, the flimsiness of genre) while lobbing us a few in the soft spots."--Time Out Chicago Time Out Chicago
Review
"Sam is the narrator of Brock Clarke's absurd if weirdly compelling faux 'memoir,' which takes aim at the danger of stories--at least false ones . . . [AN ARSONIST'S GUIDE] gets at some unexpectedly poignant emotional truths."---USA Today USA Today
Review
"Wildly, unpredictably funny. . . . An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is as cheerfully oddball as its title. Its cover art includes a tiny cartoon sketch of a green-frocked literary lioness garlanded in flames, and that captures the irreverence of the author, Brock Clarke's, enterprise. Although it is his fourth book, it feels like the bright debut of an ingeniously arch humorist, one whose hallmark is a calm approach to insanely improbable behavior. . . . The parodies here are priceless . . . Sharp-edged and unpredictable, punctuated by moments of choice absurdist humor."
—Janet Maslin, New York Times The New York Times
Review
"Like all great novels, it poses exceedingly difficult questions about how we - real people - manage our existences. . . . The word "story" - with its many implications (fiction, nonfiction, memoir, lie, truth) - is the key to "The Arsonist's Guide." . . . A novel that entertains and indicts in equal part is decidedly rare; one that manages to do so on literary grounds while its protagonist is consistently hammered is even rarer, and its own sort of joy. . . . Clarke's intelligence loops seamlessly through Sam's narration; this is just one of the book's many strengths. . . . In our world, it is Clarke's novel itself, a wonderful book."--San Francisco Chronicle The San Francisco Chronicle
Review
A "darkly hilarious, high-spirited mock-memoir mystery."—Elle Elle Magazine
Review
"An Arsonist's Guide contains sentences and images that could stand beside the works of the former owners of the literary residences put to flame. There is a single sentence of dialogue that . . . will paralyze any Willa Cather scholar. There is a lone paragraph describing a woman's head aflame . . . that could compel Stephen King to increase the fire insurance on his own New England house. Hell, Clarke himself had better buy a fire extinguisher or two from Home Depot. Who knows how many crazy firebug readers this book will goad?"—New York Times Book Review New York Times Book Review
Review
"Sam Pulsifer is now one of the great naifs of American literature. . . . [A] rollicking, hilarious and subtly heartbreaking novel . . . [and] at the same time a wrenching examination of what happens when you pry up the floorboards, flake off the stucco, open up the books and see what's really going on between husband and wife, parents and children, friends and lovers."--San Diego Union-Tribune San Diego Union-Tribune
Review
"No writer's house--neither Frost's, nor Twain's, nor Wharton's, nor Thoreau's--is safe in this comic whodunit."—Editor’s Choice in the 9/30 issue of New York Times Book Review New York Times Book Review
Review
"An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a novel in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, which is to say it's bizarre, human, funny, and sick. . . . For a guy who hates writers' houses, he sure can write."--Washington City Paper Washington City Paper
Review
"A brisk, unpredictable story populated with distinct, if frequently absurd, characters. . . Mr. Clarke is a very talented writer."--The New York Sun The New York Sun
Synopsis
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 fifinishes college, begins a career, falls in love, gets married, has two adorable kids, and buys a home. His low-profifile 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.
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a tour de force--a novel disguised as a memoir, a mystery that cloaks itself in humor, and an artful piece of literature that bites the hand that breeds it.
Synopsis
A lot of remarkable things have happened in the life of Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. emerging at age twenty-eight, he creates a new life and identity as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous New England writers suddenly go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist.
In the league of such contemporary classics as A Confederacy of Dunces and The World According to Garp, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is an utterly original story about truth and honesty, life and the imagination.
Synopsis
"Funny, profound . . . a seductive book with a payoff on every page."--People
A lot of remarkable things have happened in the life of Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. emerging at age twenty-eight, he creates a new life and identity as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous New England writers suddenly go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist.
In the league of such contemporary classics as A Confederacy of Dunces and The World According to Garp, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is an utterly original story about truth and honesty, life and the imagination.
Synopsis
A lot of remarkable things have happened to Sam Pulsifer, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. Emerging at the age of twenty-eight, he creates a new life as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous writers go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist.
About the Author
Brock Clarke is the author of three previous books: The Ordinary White Boyand two story collections. His stories and essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, OneStory, the Believer, the Georgia Review, and the Southern Reviewand have appeared in the annual Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the Southanthologies and on NPR's Selected Shorts. He lives in Cincinnati and teaches creative writing at the University of Cincinnati.