“I am thinking about the first words of another book. It was a pleasure to burn. More than anything, it was a pleasure to live.”
Genre: Mystery, Adventure, Fiction
Book Jacket Synopsis: “Molly Mavity is not a normal teenage girl. For one thing, she doesn’t believe that her mother killed herself three years ago. And since her father is about to be executed for his crimes, Molly is convinced that her mother will return to her soon. Finally, the hole in her heart will stop hurting. Pepper Al-Yusef is not your average teenage boy. A Kuwaiti immigrant with serious girl problems and the most embarrassing seizure dog in existence, he has to write a series of essays over the summer… or fail out of school. And Ava Dreyman – the brave and beautiful East German resistance fighter whose death at seventeen led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall – is unlike anyone you’ve met before. When Molly and Pepper are tasked with finding Ava’s murderer, they realize there’s more to her life – and death – than meets the eye. Someone out there is lying to them. And someone out there is guiding them along, desperate for answers.”
Review: The Arsonist is told in a somewhat unconventional form, through letters Molly writes to a comatose Pepper, essays Pepper writes to his counselor in order to graduate high school, and journal entries by the late Ava Dreyman. The plot sounds interesting enough, with two intrepid teenager’s launched into a murder mystery that spans continents and decades. Unfortunately, The Arsonist comes off as incredibly far-fetched. Am I really supposed to believe that two teenagers tracked down the address of a suspected war criminal and began questioning him at his door? Does Oakes really think the reader will believe that the same two teenagers traveled to Germany, broke into a suspect’s house, and were held at gunpoint by said suspect before discovering a missing relic and escaping? These moments, and others like them (particularly Ava’s experiences once she makes it to the U.S.), made me roll my eyes and become increasingly critical of the novel. The plot also felt disjointed; I had a hard time integrating Ava’s perspective into the overall story line, and I still don’t fully understand what happened to Pepper’s mom or the nature of the relationship between Mr. Mavity and Mr. Al-Yusef. There were certainly some nice moments of writing, with Oakes doing a good job of giving both Molly and Pepper independent and unique voices (again, Ava’s perspective was the weakest link for me; she came across as unnaturally proper for someone her age).
“That day, I climbed to the top of the train bridge behind my childhood home on Syracuse Road, the one I lived in before my family split apart like an orange.”
The Arsonist is a good novel if you’re looking for a story about teenagers with ridiculous lives. But if you prefer more grounded fiction, as I do, then you’ll likely find The Arsonist excessive, unbelievable, and ultimately uninteresting.
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