[Book Review] The Arsonist

The Arsonist, by Stephanie Oakes

© 2017 Penguin Random House

This one sat on our bookshelf for almost a year before my wife read it, but as soon as she finished she got me to read it, and now I'm kicking myself for not reading it sooner. More than once I live-texted my wife as I read, keeping her up-to-date on which jaw-dropping reversal of fortune I had just witnessed. The Arsonist has twists and turns, game-changing revelations and appalling betrayals, each one following close on the heels of another. At first, the bizarre cover art turned me off (though full disclosure: I read an advance copy, so the cover art and text of your version might be different), but once I started reading I quickly found the main characters engrossing. The Arsonist has three protagonists, all teenagers: epic-level weirdo and social pariah Molly Mavity, seizure-prone Kuwaiti immigrant Ibrahim "Pepper" Al-Yusef, and . . . well, the third protagonist is complicated.

The third protagonist is Ava Dreyman, and we mostly learn about her through her posthumously-published 1989 diary, which details her escape from East Germany in the mid-80s, followed by her return to rescue her mother, and her (apparent?) death at the hands of a high-ranking Stasi officer. But as Molly and Pepper delve deeper into the mystery of Ava's death—which intertwines with the secrets kept from both of them by their respective parents—they are forced to question not only Ava's story, but the narratives which they've both built up to define their own lives and identities.

Fernsehturm, Berlin

The Arsonist is marketed in the "Teen & Young Adult Mystery & Suspense" category (among others), but I feel that this sells the story somewhat short. While aimed at teenagers, this novel could easily find a welcome audience among adults. Arguably, adults who remember the Cold War might actually get more out of this story than its intended audience can. It's one thing to learn about the Cold War in history class, but it's very different if you actually lived through it. Personally, I was old enough to be vaguely familiar with the word "NATO" and know that it was on the news a lot, but since Berlin Wall came down when I had barely entered preschool, the Iron Curtain always seemed to me more like an artifact of the past than something that was briefly my contemporary. So for me, I feel I came away with a greater appreciation for events which took place during my own lifetime.

Oakes' gripping prose ricochets from viewpoint to viewpoint, rotating with blinding speed between Molly, Pepper, and excerpts from Ava's diary: which, in this fictional universe, is a large part of the reason the Berlin Wall came down in the first place. The shocking tale of Ava's state-sanctioned torture and death galvanized the downtrodden East German public and helped give them the courage to stand up to their monstrous rulers and its vast network of spies and informants; a sort of East German Anne Frank, if you will. But hero-worship makes us blind to realities we would often rather forget, or wish we had never known: as Captain Mal once said, "every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another." Turns out that little chestnut applies to teenage girls, too (though I won't say exactly how).

The Palast der Republik, East Berlin

The Arsonist is also a poignant examination of loss, and the ways in which we heal, sometimes without realizing it, from wounds which we felt sure must kill us. All the characters in this book (and especially the three protagonists) are dealing with loss in one way or another, and the protagonists all have dead parents in their pasts. For Pepper, it's his mother, who died while giving birth to him in the shadow of a burning oil field during Operation Desert Storm. For Molly it's her mother, whom the rest of the world believes committed suicide three years ago, but whom Molly still insists upon believing is alive and in hiding for unknown reasons. And Ava... well, I won't spoil it for you, but let it never be said that writing, printing, and distributing a subversive newsletter and burning down Stasi administration buildings is an occupation that's free from risk.

Overall, I give The Arsonist the very highest marks, even in its unedited pre-publication form. Switching with ease between the hilarious and the horrifying, between snappy dialogue and heart-wrenching examinations of grief, adolescence, parenthood, and trauma and healing (both emotional and physical), The Arsonist is an adrenaline-fueled thrill ride that somehow finds time to sneak in an emotional sucker-punch or two when you're least expecting them.