How to Set a Fire and Why
A Novel
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4.6 • 14 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A teenage girl. A shattering loss. An obsession with a secret arson club. This is the story of a girl who has nothing and will burn anything.
Lucia’s father is dead, her mother is in a mental hospital, and she’s living in a garage-turned-bedroom with her aunt. And now she’s been kicked out of school—again. Making her way through the world with only a book, a zippo lighter, a pocketful of stolen licorice, a biting wit, and the striking intelligence that she tries to hide, Lucia spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother and following the only rule that makes any sense to her: Don’t do things you aren’t proud of. But when she discovers that her new school has a secret Arson Club, she’s willing to do anything to be a part of it, and her life is suddenly lit up. As Lucia’s fascination with the Arson Club grows, her story becomes one of misguided friendship and, ultimately, destruction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The beautifully blunt narration of a gifted delinquent propels this excellent sixth novel from the author of A Cure for Suicide. Orphaned after the death of her father and her mother's subsequent institutionalization, young Lucia Stanton finds herself expelled from high school (the specific location of which is never given) for stabbing a star athlete with a pencil. Entrusted to the care of her elderly, sagely aunt, Lucia transfers to Whistler High, where, in the form of a secret arson society, she discovers an outlet for her inner turmoil. Penning her own pamphlet on fire starting (the titular "How To Set a Fire and Why"), Lucia details a philosophy that smartly parallels the novel's own namely, that writing literature is, like arson, an act of creation and destruction. The few successful friendships and personal bonds Lucia makes are swiftly undone by a late-act tragedy, but, in the book's pyromaniacal finale, Lucia finds a thrilling form of freedom. In an age of blandly interchangeable YA narrators, this novel is a song of teenage heartbreak sung with a movingly particular sadness, a mature meditation on how actually saying something, not just speaking, is what most makes a voice human.
