Reviews
"[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."
"A serious novel that is often very funny and will be a page-turning pleasure for anyone who loves literature."—Kirkus Reviews
"Brock Clarke flames entire genres of fiction in this clever and often hilarious tale."—Paste magazine
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
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
"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
"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
"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
A "darkly hilarious, high-spirited mock-memoir mystery."—Elle
"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
"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
"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
"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
"A brisk, unpredictable story populated with distinct, if frequently absurd, characters. . . Mr. Clarke is a very talented writer."--The New York Sun
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