{"id":730,"date":"2013-08-23T07:20:57","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T15:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=730"},"modified":"2013-08-23T07:20:57","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T15:20:57","slug":"review-an-arsonists-guide-to-writers-homes-in-new-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/23\/review-an-arsonists-guide-to-writers-homes-in-new-england\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: An Arsonist’s Guide To Writers’ Homes In New England"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An<\/a>
\n An Arsonist’s Guide To Writers’ Homes In New England<\/a> by Brock Clarke<\/a>
\n My rating: 4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

This started out as a solid three-star book, worked its way up to four via cleverness, and then got bogged down in a bit of tedium and down to three again. But I\u2019m nostalgic for that cleverness, so call it three point five, rounded up to four. I\u2019m going to justify this by saying that I\u2019m looking forward to reading Brock Clarke\u2019s other books, which is praise enough.<\/p>\n

An Arsonist\u2019s Guide<\/i> is silly, but it\u2019s such a subtle silliness that you kind of have to pay attention. It pops up here and there, an almost hidden taste of absurdity. This casts the main character as something of a fool, allowing the reader to doubt the veracity of his passions at almost every turn. He\u2019s a self-proclaimed \u201cbumbler,\u201d a man prone to \u201caccidents,\u201d and while you take those accidents at face value at first, you start to wonder about them towards the end.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s that end where I got a bit frustrated, as I say, with tedium. I wanted some kind of resolution, if not revelation. New characters keep showing up, each as stand-out exquisite as the next, and I don\u2019t know whether to cast them as environmental or willful. When we finally do get a few histories revealed, my reaction was \u201creally\u201d and the same time as \u201chow would that even work.\u201d<\/p>\n

I guess the point is that if readers\u2019 willfully suspend disbelief, so do people in real-life, with the expectation that their own life will tell a story. It\u2019s easy to tell lies to people who want to hear a narrative, not the cold, inconvenient truth. Or something. <\/p>\n

But I liked it. The Arsonist\u2019s Guide<\/i> felt to me like what A Confederacy of Dunces<\/i> would be if set in New England suburbs with a much humbler Ignatius J. Reilly. Brock Clarke has been compared to John Irving, and this character to Irving\u2019s Garp<\/i> (which I have not read) so I guess that says something for those of you who like that sort of thing. <\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Arsonist’s Guide To Writers’ Homes In New England by Brock Clarke My rating: 4 of 5 stars This started out as a solid three-star book, worked its way up to four via cleverness, and then got bogged down in a bit of tedium and down to three again. But I\u2019m nostalgic for that cleverness, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: An Arsonist’s Guide To Writers’ Homes In New England”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-bM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":731,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions\/731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}