How to Set a Fire and Why - Brossura

Ball, Jesse

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1925355470 ISBN 13: 9781925355475

Casa editrice: The Text Publishing Company, 2016

Riassunto

T14-year-old Lucia is a young narrator whose voice will long ring in your ears. She is angry with almost everyone, especially people who tell her what to do. She follows the one rule that makes any sense to her: Don't Do Things You Aren't Proud Of.

Orphaned and living with her elderly aunt in poverty in the converted garage of a large mansion, Lucia makes her way through the world with only a book, a Zippo lighter and a pocket full of stolen liquorice. Expelled from school, again, Lucia spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother in The Home.

When Lucia discovers a secret Arson Club, she will do anything to be a part of it. Her own arson manifesto is a marvellous anarchist pamphlet, written with biting wit and striking intelligence. The voice of teenaged Lucia is a tour de force: a brilliant, wrenching cry from the heart and mind of a super-smart, funny girl who can't help telling us the truth, a riveting chronicle of family, misguided friendship and loss.

How to Set a Fire and Why is Jesse Ball's most accessible novel yet; after Silence Once Begun (2014) and A Cure for Suicide (2015), the pyrotechnics on display here will dazzle.

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Recensione

AS FEATURED IN GRANTA MAGAZINE

'Halfway between The Catcher in the Rye and Fight Club, but funnier than either.' - Weekly Review

'Ball's take on the teen voice rings absolutely true; a potent mix of directness, self-deception and biting wit.' - Weekly Review

'[Lucia] is a Holden Caulfield for a post-cultural studies generation' - Saturday Paper

'[Ball] is both moral and whimsical, playfully experimenting with style and humour while fixated on the devastating effect of personal actions... Articulating a heartbreaking range of emotions with newfound accessibility, How to Set a Fire and Why deserves to be this cult author's commercial breakout.' - Big Issue'Its best passages are its most banal litanies, which pass seamlessly from bleak pessimism to hopeful effusion. There is a lulling rhythm to Lucia's matter-of-fact recitations, and their austerity makes her grander pronouncements all the more touching.' --The TLS

'For a young writer, Jesse Ball's output has been incredibly prolific. We're getting to the point where it's almost impossible for him to release a bad book. His works, though wildly different, are always mysterious, puzzling and incredibly interesting. How to Set a Fire and Why is no exception.' --Readings

'Jesse Ball has written an unforgettably memorable character in the pyromaniac Lucia, who anyone who was once a cynical teenager will recognize and relate to.' --Buzzfeed

'Spare and elliptical, frog-hopping from scene to scene, making stories that aren't plot-driven into page-turners.' --Huffington Post

'Lucia Stanton, the teenage protagonist of Jesse Ball's sixth novel, How to Set a Fire and Why, is intellectually precocious, cynical and broadly uninterested in social niceties.' - Literary Review

'In Jesse Ball's writing, there's no visible effort to create poetry. Yet there's beauty in the simplicity, in the story that's told, in the plight of one girl to find what's true.' --Age/Sydney Morning Herald

'Questions of fairness dominate the text and subtext of the narrative, and the dramatic tension underlying several key scenes flows from a disproportionate balance of power between two characters.' --LA Review of Books

'This latest book, however, journeys into new and fruitful territory for Ball.' --New York Times

'Jesse Ball is known for his experimental styles, but this epistolary novel of a troubled teen girl in written with a more accessible approach but still delivers on wit, humor, and unexpected plot twists.' --Book Riot

'An engaging and compassionate tale of loss, inequality and disaffected youth.' --Annethology

L'autore

Jesse Ball(1978-) was born in New York and is the author of fourteen books, most recently, the novel How To Set a Fire and Why. His works have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, won the 2008 Plimpton Prize, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and has been a fellow of the NEA, Creative Capital, and Guggenheim Foundation.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: The Text Publishing Company
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1925355470
• ISBN 13: 9781925355475
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 294
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile