商品簡介
"How to Set a Fire and Why is a blistering, singular, devastating novel by Jesse Ball ("A young genius who hits all of the right notes." --Chicago Tribune) about a teenage girl who has lost everything and will burn anything. Lucia has been kicked out of school, again, this time for stabbing a boy in the neck with a pencil. Her father is dead; her mother is in a mental institute; and she's living in a garage-turned-bedroom with her aunt. Making her way through the world with only a book, a Zippo lighter, and a pocket full of stolen licorice, Lucia spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother in The Home, avoiding the landlord who hates her, and following the only rule that makes any sense: Don't Do Things You Aren't Proud Of. When Lucia starts at Whistler High it seems no different from the schools that came before: girls play field hockey, chasing the ball like dogs, the school psychologist has beanbag chairs in her office, and detention means sitting silently surrounded by stupid people ("I am a veteran of detention"). But when Lucia discovers a secret Arson Club, she will do anything to be a part of it. With a biting wit and striking intelligence that she can't fully hide, Lucia animates her small-town life: the parties at an abandoned water park, visits to the 24-hour donut shop where her friend Lana's cousin works, the little island in the middle of a medical park where kids go to drink. As Lucia's fascination with the Arson Club grows, her chronicle becomes a riveting story of family, loss, misguided friendship, and destruction"--
作者簡介
JESSE BALL is the author of five previous novels, including A Cure for Suicide, Silence Once Begun, Samedi the Deafness,and several works of verse, bestiaries, and sketchbooks. A Cure for Suicide was longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award. Ball was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and aLos Angeles Times Book Prize. He received an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship for 2014 and the 2008Paris Review Plimpton Prize, and his verse has been included in the Best American Poetry series. He gives classes on general practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's MFA Writing program.
