Brock Clarke - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

I've been looking forward to reading this one! And so, what a shame, then, that my predominant response to it was one of irritation. The bumbling narrator, Sam Pulsifer, basically annoyed the hell out of me, and despite that, the bad end to which he eventually comes rings dreadfully false. Sure, I get that Clarke is playing more than one type of literary game here, but it's all a bit depthless, both in the sense that it has no solid bottom (ultimately, no substance) and in that (another way of saying the same thing) it's all surface in the end, however multiplicious its layers - we're not meant to take Sam, or his narrative, seriously, but at the same time, what's being said about both is something we're clearly meant to take oh-so-seriously and I'm not down with that. A shame in more than one way, because there are some good ideas in Arsonist's and some decent writing in bursts, as well as an evident ability to hold a story together over the course of a whole novel, but the pieces just don't quite fit. Still, I admire the chutzpah and the willingness to try for something different without any obvious signposting, trusting instead to the writer's own ability and the reader's acuity for the point to be made...