A New Book

It has become something of a tradition that every year, at Christmas, my dad will give each of us a book to read.  It sounds kind of nerdy, but he always picks these best-seller books that are really great and fun to read.  It sort of makes me feel guilty that I'm reading something fun and not something of monstrous literary significance.  After starting this new book, I was so struck by it that I just had to write down my impressions.  This is what I get for reading right before bed!  The book is called An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke.

This writer writes as if he were speaking the way some people I've met do: like a writer who writes the way he speaks.  I guess that's not saying a whole lot.  His sentences are at least six lines long, and punctuated with commas and hyphens.  It's easy to get lost in a cycle of appositives.  He's the kind of writer that will digress every other paragraph, and take an entire chapter to make a single point.  Coupled with this almost annoying style, is the ridiculously fast pace of the book.  The author has no problem simply stating major events in just a few words, and with the amount of alluding he does from chapter to chapter, reading thirty pages of this book is entirely exhausting.

That said, I'm really enjoying this book.  The premise is so simple, yet so unique and specific.  A man goes to jail for an accidental crime.  His life is basically ruined and the story seems to be about the affects this has on his life.  It's a tried and true premise for a story, but the author gives so many details, that it's easy to see past what would otherwise be a bit of a cliche story.  I mean, honestly,  how often do you hear a story about a man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickenson house and killed two people in the process?  Sounds kinda interesting to me.

All in all, the book would be pretty bleak if it weren't for the author's extravagantly trivial observations.  It doesn't seem like the story teller can take anything seriously, which makes for a pretty funny read.  At the same time, however, I feel the main character's pain.  There's something so agonizingly real about being accused of something you didn't do, or didn't mean to do.  There's a kind of haunting feeling that lives in all of us when we know that someone could blackmail us, and there's nothing we could do about it.  Just hinting that the character might go through these things, instantly brings up these built-in emotions that the author somehow knows I have.

So far: great book.