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rebeccacider 's review for:
American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land
by Monica Hesse
As a narrative, this exceeded expectations—I enjoyed Hesse's accomplished but down-to-earth prose, and felt she did a decent job capturing the feel of rural Virginia without succumbing to simplistic narratives about small-town decay and obsolescence. While the book markets itself as depicting a "vanishing land," I don't think Hesse's narrative frames it quite that way.
Any prose work is going to be hard-pressed to capture as surreal a series of crimes as the Eastern Shore arson cases. I thought the story was at its best when depicting the community response, from volunteer firefighter camaraderie to Facebook speculation. Yet I'm not convinced there's any "there there" when it comes to analyzing the motivations of the perpetrators. It's true that the Eastern Shore is an ideal landscape for a would-be arsonist, but the events that led to the crimes feel more-or-less universal.
Perhaps this is its own lesson—if you approach a crime story looking for a metaphor, and find it, you may simply be a very good writer. Hesse dodges the trap, but what's left is just a very weird story.
Any prose work is going to be hard-pressed to capture as surreal a series of crimes as the Eastern Shore arson cases. I thought the story was at its best when depicting the community response, from volunteer firefighter camaraderie to Facebook speculation. Yet I'm not convinced there's any "there there" when it comes to analyzing the motivations of the perpetrators. It's true that the Eastern Shore is an ideal landscape for a would-be arsonist, but the events that led to the crimes feel more-or-less universal.
Perhaps this is its own lesson—if you approach a crime story looking for a metaphor, and find it, you may simply be a very good writer. Hesse dodges the trap, but what's left is just a very weird story.