50 Book Challenge #7: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

This is a frivolous book strewn with failed attempts at pathos. In a proactive bit of metacriticism, one character intones that our protagonist sounds less like a real person than a cheap trick of fiction. He is, unfortunately, correct. The book is most amusing when it mocks actual writers or literary phenomena through thinly veiled caricature and least successful in its attempts to involve us in the emotional lives of the protagonist and his family. Perfect for airplanes or other time-killing intervals but not shelfworthy.