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The Arsonist: A Novel
Author:
Miller, Sue
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3563.I
Print Run: 100000
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ISBN-13: 9780307594792
LCCN: 2013041004
Imprint: Knopf
Publisher: Random House
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Pub Date: 06/24/2014
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $25.95
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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303 pages ; 25 cm
H 9.52",
W 6.6",
D 1.13",
1.3519 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Blockbuster List
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Booklist High-Demand Hot List
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Awards:
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Library Journal Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Library Journal
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TIPS Subjects:
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Psychological Fiction
Suspense/Thriller
Mystery/Detective Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Women
FICTION / Family Life / General
FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
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LC Subjects:
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Arson investigation, Fiction
Arson, Fiction
Psychological fiction
Pyromania, Fiction
Suspense fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Arson, Fiction
Criminal investigation, Fiction
Fires, Psychological aspects, Fiction
Mystery fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 02/01/2014 |
| With no clear purpose after her 15 years in East Africa, Frankie Rowley returns to her small New Hampshire hometown just as a fire destroys a house just up the road from her old family farmhouse in Pomeroy. When one fire leads to several, neighbors who have long trusted each other begin to turn on their own as Frankie falls into an intense affair with the former political journalist who bought the local newspaper. 320pp., 100K, Auth res: Boston, MA, Tour |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Library Journal | 06/13/2014 |
| Frankie Rowley is at loose ends. After 15 years of aid work in Africa-15 years of countless intense, go-nowhere relationships-she returns to her family's summer compound in Pomeroy, NH, one summer in the late 1990s to recharge and figure out next steps. Rest and relaxation are not in the cards for, as Frankie quickly learns, her father is losing himself to dementia and her resentful but duty-bound mother needs help. Bud Jacobs, who fled two failed marriages and his high-intensity Washington life as a journalist for the Denver Post, has been editor and publisher of the Pomeroy Union for the past three years. He is thriving in Pomeroy, well liked by those who appreciate the job he is doing on the paper. These two intelligent souls, much better at the professional than the personal, are thrown together when, restless and jetlagged on her first night home, Frankie may have witnessed an elusive arsonist fleeing from the first in a terrifying string of fires that attack the homes of the summer people and Bud covers the stories. Verdict As the fires and the passionate attraction between Bud and Frankie burn hotter, Miller works her usual storytelling magic, immersing her readers in the powerful cocktail of fear and uncertainty-whether that mixture cracks a once-tight community or threatens the human heart. [See Prepub Alert, 1/6/14.]-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor. MI. 320p. LJ Xpress Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 07/01/2014 |
| Someone is setting fire to the houses of Pomeroy, New Hampshire, in Sue Miller's latest novel, but that's beside the point. The important thing is that Francesca "Frankie" Rowley has returned from a long sojourn in Africa as an aid worker and she doesn't know what to do with herself. Besides, the thing that lights her fire is Bud Jacobs, the local newspaper editor whose life is just as up in the air as hers is. The two launch a passionate affair even as everyone else's summer home is being torched. But there are other things that concern Frankie, who's a little, er, burned out from both the futility and tiny, ephemeral triumphs of her work in Africa. She's moved back in with her parents and neither she nor they know whether the move is permanent. Moreover, her father, who has never been attentive to Frankie, her sister Liz or their mother Sylvia, is sinking into dementia. Miller's skill as a writer has always allowed her readers to stick with a story no matter how self-absorbed her characters are. Part of this success is because Miller (Lake Shore Limited, The Senator's Wife) tends to focus on intelligent women forced to choose between passions and duties that seem irreconcilable. Should Frankie stay near her parents, who need her? Should she stay with Bud? Should she return to Africa, where she can do her best work and where there are no doubt other men waiting? The Arsonist is a worthy snapshot of the dilemmas faced by certain women of a certain time and how they choose to tackle them. Arlene McKanic. 320p. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Booklist | 05/01/2014 |
| With her trademark elegant prose and masterful command of subtle psychological nuance, Miller explores the tensions between the summer people and the locals in a small New Hampshire town. Frankie Rowley, after years spent doing relief work abroad, has returned to her parents' summer home, unsure of whether she will ever go back to East Africa, feeling depleted by that region's seemingly endless suffering. But the reassuring comfort of the small town she has been coming to since she was a girl is shattered by a series of fires set by an arsonist who has targeted the rambling summer homes of the wealthy. Frankie falls into an unexpected and passionate love affair with the local newspaper editor while also becoming privy to her parents' difficulties, with her mother seeming to resent her husband's decline into Alzheimer's, especially since she no longer loves him. The town, awash in fear of the unknown arsonist, splits into factions aligned along class divisions. In this suspenseful and romantic novel, Miller delicately parses the value of commitment and community, the risky nature of relationships, and the yearning for meaningful work. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Miller's new novel has a first printing of 100,000, and her publisher is launching a full-throttle marketing campaign; no surprise for an author with more than 4 million copies of her books sold. Wilkinson, Joanne. 320p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 05/01/2014 |
| As a series of fires in a small New Hampshire town exposes tensions between summer and year-round residents, the members of one in-between family confront their own desires, limitations and capacities to love in Miller's latest (The Lake Shore Limited, 2010, etc.).Burned out on her transient life working for an NGO in Africa, Frankie takes a possibly permanent leave and comes to stay with her parents, Sylvia and Alfie, in Pomeroy, N.H., where they have recently retired after years of summering there. The night of Frankie's arrival coincides with the town's first house fire, which everyone assumes was an accident. Days later, at the annual Fourth of July tea, Frankie begins a flirtation with Bud, who runs Pomeroy's newspaper, and accompanies him to the site of the fire so he can take pictures. When a second fire occurs, again at a home belonging to summer residents, Bud begins to wonder if arson is involved. Soon there are more fires--at least six--and Bud is actively covering the story. Frankie becomes more involved than she'd like after realizing she may have seen the arsonist's car the night of the first fire. Her description helps lead to an arrest. As the investigation meanders--one of the least exciting detective stories ever--Frankie and Bud begin falling in love, though both are in their 40s and on different life paths. But the heart of the story really lies in Sylvia and Alfie's marriage. For years, seemingly super-competent Sylvia has been secretly dissatisfied with her marriage to self-important but only moderately successful college professor Alfie. Now Alfie's mind is failing and she's stuck caring for him. Miller's portrayal of early Alzheimer's and the toll it takes on a family is disturbingly accurate and avoids the sentimental uplift prevalent in issue-oriented fiction. Any spouse who has been there will recognize Sylvia's guilt, anger, protectiveness and helplessness as she watches Alfie deteriorate.While the melodrama fails to ignite, Miller captures all the complicated nuances of a family in crisis. 320pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 01/06/2014 |
| Retiring with her increasingly erratic professor husband to the New Hampshire town where she has summered for decades doesn't turn out as planned for Sylvia Rowley. Social tensions surface, starting with the renovation Sylvia's son is doing on the property, and then local homes start falling to an arsonist. From the multi-million-copy best-selling Miller. 352p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 04/28/2014 |
| A small New Hampshire town provides the backdrop for Miller's (The Senator's Wife) provocative novel about the boundaries of relationships and the tenuous alliance between locals and summer residents when a crisis is at hand. After years of being an aid worker in Africa, Frankie Rowley returns to the idyllic Pomeroy, N.H., summer home to which her parents have retired. But all is not well in Pomeroy, where a spate of house fires leaves everyone wary and afraid. Frankie, who may have seen the arsonist her first night home, contemplates her ambiguous future and falls for Bud Jacobs, a transplant who has traded the hustle and bustle of covering politics in D.C. for the security of smalltown life, buying the local newspaper. Meanwhile, Sylvia, Frankie's mother, becomes concerned about her husband's increasingly erratic behavior, fearful that it's a harbinger of Alzheimer's. Liz, Frankie's married sister, has her hands full dealing with their parents while Frankie's been overseas. Miller, a pro at explicating family relationships as well as the fragile underpinnings of mature romance, brilliantly draws parallels between Frankie's world in Africa and her life in New Hampshire, and explores how her characters define what "home" means to them and the lengths they will go to protect it. (June). 320p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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9780307594792,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 06/29/2014 |
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