Shawn Towner reviewed How to set a fire and why by Jesse Ball
Review of 'How to set a fire and why' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
John Green writes books about young people dealing with not fitting in, loss, and other challenges of growing up. If you look up John Green's books on Google Books, they are categorized under the subject "Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / Dating and Sex."
Jesse Ball's How to Start a Fire and Why is a book about a young person dealing with not fitting in, loss, and other challenges of growing up. If you look up Ball's novel on Google books, it is categorized under the subject "Fiction / Literary." What's the deal with that?
The simple answer is that a Ball is a better, more literary writer than Green. But what makes a writer more literary? Is it that Ball has an MFA and writes poetry while Green has a Tumblr and makes YouTube vlogs?
Or it could be because the Young Adult literature category is more of …
John Green writes books about young people dealing with not fitting in, loss, and other challenges of growing up. If you look up John Green's books on Google Books, they are categorized under the subject "Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / Dating and Sex."
Jesse Ball's How to Start a Fire and Why is a book about a young person dealing with not fitting in, loss, and other challenges of growing up. If you look up Ball's novel on Google books, it is categorized under the subject "Fiction / Literary." What's the deal with that?
The simple answer is that a Ball is a better, more literary writer than Green. But what makes a writer more literary? Is it that Ball has an MFA and writes poetry while Green has a Tumblr and makes YouTube vlogs?
Or it could be because the Young Adult literature category is more of a marketing tag than a content tag, and that the Pantheon imprint (publishers of Mark Danielewski and books about literary arguments) isn't interested in marketing books towards the young adult reader.
Regardless of the classification rationale, marking How to Start a Fire and Why as literary fiction does a disservice to both the novel and to potential readers. How to Start a Fire and Why is a young adult novel, and it's a great young adult novel.
Lucia, the protagonist of the novel, struggles to fit into the social and academic systems at school and eventually becomes fascinated with arson. Like many of John Green's characters, Lucia is literate and brilliant beyond her teenage years, quoting Rumi and reading books about the Russian peasant class. And there are other familiar characters from the young adult world: the overbearing school admin, the weird outcast with a crush on the protagonist, the lone compassionate and supportive teacher. But there are also characters who break the typical YA mold, like creepy older men who Lucia often views with suspicion. It's these more mature views of the world that make it so essential for a book like How to Start a Fire and Why to be classified as young adult literature.
I'll admit, I haven't been a huge advocate for young adult literature. In fact, I thought I hated YA lit for a very long time. Eventually, I realized that I don't hate YA lit, I hate literature that deals with relationships, which a lot of YA books do. It was reading Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave that opened me up to young adult literature. (Although I hated all the love triangle stuff; just kill the damn aliens!) A book like How to Start a Fire and Why could help to eliminate the stigma against young adult literature (and genre fiction in general).
I want people (and especially young people) to read good books. I want them to read books that aren't all movie tie-ins or blatant ripoffs intended to capitalize on the popularity of books that are movie tie-ins (like the entire cottage industry of Gone Girl imitators). If books like How to Start a Fire and Why are shelved with Jonathan Franzen instead of John Green, it reduces the likelihood of that happening.
How to Start a Fire and Why is a great book. There are a couple of parts where Ball focuses on Lucia's writings that interrupted the momentum of the book, but it's otherwise a great combination of story, character, and thought. It's the type of book that's short enough and engaging enough to serve as a sort of gateway read that can encourage readers to diversify their reading habits and explore lesser known authors who publish with smaller presses. Not that there's anything wrong with reading John Green and Stephen King and the like, but there are so many authors and publishers to explore, and How to Start a Fire and Why is a prime example of why we need to seek out and support those authors and publishers.
