Last week, at the same time that I picked out the book The Long Walk, I wandered past a book called How to Set a Fire and Why. It caught my eye because, on the spine of the book, there is a classic matchbook strike plate. When I was younger, I used to visit my grandfather’s house every day after Kindergarten and, being an avid smoker, he had thousands of matchboxes lying around. I always wanted to light a match, but I never did. Instead, I would run my fingernails over the strike plate as if it were a nail file. I remember pretending that my fingers were matches and that I was setting the house on fire, not just shaving down my nail. The spine of this book reminded me of my childhood, so I decided to check it out.
The book, written by Jesse Ball is about Lucia, a young teenage girl who’s mother is in an insane asylum and who’s father was murdered (presumably by her mother). Lucia lives with her aunt in a garage that has been converted to a small house. Her aunt is very old and does not have a job, so they both live very meagerly.
Okay, this is the part where spoilers come into play, so get ready!
**********SPOILERS AHEAD!**********
The book begins with Lucia having stabbed a boy in the neck with a pencil. He touched her father’s lighter, which she always keeps in her pocket and tells no one to ever touch, and she instantly wishes that she had stabbed him deeper. For very obvious reasons, she is kicked out of school and forced to move to a new school. It is not the first time she’s been expelled, so she’s fairly used to the drill. This is where my first grievance comes in: Lucia’s aunt is not angry with her niece. She does not chastise Lucia for stabbing someone IN THE THROAT! Hell, she even seems to be proud of her niece. I get that both Lucia’s father and aunt were supposed to be somewhat anarchist, but even an anarchist would not condone a throat-stabbing! Especially not from their own kid (or niece)! The part that really gets me is that Lucia claims that she understands what rules are and that she is mindful of them, but I can’t think of a single time she was actually a rule-abiding person. She mostly just steals, burns shit, gets high, gets drunk, or stabs people in the throat.
Anyway, in her new school, she turns in a really great paper, blah blah blah, and she hears about a club called the Sonar Club. Sonar, fun fact, is an anagram for Arson. She hears this from a guy who obviously has a crush on her, seems like an important character, and then really doesn’t impact the plot at all. This boy, however, introduces Lucia to the actual leader of the real Arson club (which isn’t at the high school? And there are meetings maybe? I don’t really understand how this club works tbh). The leader is a boy named Jan (I had Office flashbacks too). It seemed like there was going to be a thing with Lucia and Jan, but there wasn’t. Personally, I’m glad that there wasn’t because holy shit this book was hella angsty to begin with, and it DID NOT need a romance subplot, so props to Jesse Ball!
Jan invites Lucia to be the lookout while he lights a building on fire. She loves it, and she is immediately entered into the Arson club (even though it’s maybe not even really a club?). By now, Lucia has met Lana. Lana is her best friend, and she is just as dysfunctional as Lucia. Not much more to say about that because the two characters are basically copies and Lana’s character is really forgettable.
Lucia’s aunt has a stroke and goes to the hospital. She comes home, but dies shortly after. In between the hospital visit and coming home, Lucia is invited by her amazing teacher to test for a totally free boarding school. The test questions are HELLA vague (like “why Hitler?” ) and one isn’t even a question (“Tell me a joke.”), but Lucia passes and is accepted. Her aunt is glad because she wasn’t really sure what was going to happen to Lucia after her death. What does happen is not AT ALL what her aunt had in mind. Lucia sees that her aunt’s most prized possession, her wedding dress and her husband’s tux (which were never mentioned up until this point) were missing. She suspects the landlord because the landlord hates her. She goes to see the landlord and, lo and behold, the landlord has the dress and the tux. He then calls the cops, and it turns out that he had already called in a warning for Lucia and her aunt in case the aunt died, so Lucia is now homeless. She goes to school the next day, and the principal says that he knows about the crime committed and will make Lucia’s life Hell if she doesn’t drop out of school, so she drops out (which I think is fair. She never really liked school, and she really went for her aunt’s sake.) The principal had called the boarding school that accepted her, and they rebuked their acceptance. Lucia has nothing left, so she, Jan, and Lana decide to burn the landlord’s house down.
Lucia’s final chapter is just a prediction of what will happen. She wants to burn down the house, and then she wants to leave town and never return. Her biggest fear is not about getting caught, but that (in her absence) her mother will suddenly become lucid and will cry out for her daughter, but Lucia will never return to see her mother again. And that’s the end.
**********SPOILERS OVER**********
Alright, list time:
The good:
The plot is mildly interesting. While the tone can be very depressing, it is interesting to watch Lucia ruin her life further, but it is only interesting in the same way watching a car crash is interesting.
Lucia’s aunt, despite being a terrible guardian (by literally letting Lucia get away with whatever the fuck she wants) is actually a really sweet character, and I really enjoyed her.
It is alluded that Lucia has a blacklist of people that she wants to kill. Weirdly enough, this was a plus. She, for only a moment, because a character that wasn’t just super crazy angsty, but that had some actual bite behind her bark. The fire she sets at the end provided this as well. Lucia is also an unwilling narrator, which is not often seen in novels. I personally enjoyed that, because it helped characterize Lucia more.
Finally, an orthodox church is mentioned! As an Eastern Orthodox Christian myself, that was very exiting. You don’t see many of those in the literary world (unless if you live in Russia or and Eastern European country, in which you see it all the time).
Now for the part I love (The Bad):
At first, I thought Lucia was mentally challenged like the boy in The Case of the Dog in the Nighttime (Amazon link), but over time I began to realize that she isn’t actually mentally challenged, but that the author wrote her in a way that seemed awkward. Take this quote for example:
“Drunk means: you can understand what they are doing and why and you don’t have to fear them as much as when you wonder what they want,” (Ball 138).
Throughout the whole novel, Lucia speaks in a very choppy and matter-of-fact way that is highly reminiscent of The Case of the Do gin the Nighttime, but I began to realize that this is not actually intentional, and that it was almost a mistake as it was highly distracting and impeded on my ability to pay attention on the plot. I was so busy trying to diagnose Lucia that I couldn’t pay attention to what she was actually talking about! Lucia is also S U P E R angsty. I get that having your mother locked up in a mental hospital and your father die is very traumatic, but wow Lucia was your typical YA novel teen (especially with that SUPER tragic backstory and not a single good thing ever happening to her). Seriously, there was so little development with her that I almost thought this was a poorly written YA novel (I ended up googling it and it isn’t actually a YA novel). Lucia’s voice was so dry, detached, and angsty that the plot seemed boring. if you were to write down just the plot, it would seem incredibly interesting and full of deep emotions, but Lucia’s character actually prevented this, which is never a good thing.
Finally, the ending was just awful. It was so dull, and it didn’t actually say what happened. It gave Lucia’s prediction and then left it at that, and not in a cliffhanger-y sort of way, but more of a wow-I-wasted-all-this-time-for-nothing sort of way. That isn’t to say that I hated the book itself, just the ending.
Now, of the moment you’ve all been waiting for…
MY RATING!
I give this book:
Two Pizza Slices!
The book was fairly average. I finished it, but I don’t think that I will remember any of it in a week or so. It was just another book in a long line of books, and that is mostly because Lucia was a terrible character and prevented the book from being awesome. So, read this book if you’ve got time to kill, but it isn’t going to be groundbreaking.
Join us next Wednesday at Noon for my next book, and be sure to comment any book recommendations you have!
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