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The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire

Chloe Hooper

4.19 · Rating details · 1,256 ratings · 146 reviews

On the scorching February day in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, a man lit two fires in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno. In the Valley, where the rates of crime were the highest in the state, more than thirty people were known to police as firebugs. But the detectives soon found themselves on the trail of a man th ...more

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Paperback, 258 pages

Published 2018 by Viking Australia

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· 1,256 ratings · 146 reviews

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Oct 21, 2018 Jaclyn Crupi rated it really liked it

Chloe Hooper, I’ve missed your voice and your brain. It has been way too long between books. This is exactly the kind of narrative non-fiction I hunger for.

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Oct 20, 2018 Michael Livingston rated it liked it

This is an incredibly readable, upsetting and sometimes insightful book about one of the fires from Victoria's black saturday and the subsequent investigation and prosecution of the man who lit it. Hooper is a smart and compelling writer - I smashed through this in a day, almost unable to stop myself - but I was left feeling like it was a bit heavy on drama and a bit light on illumination.

Partly this comes from the story she's chosen - the titular arsonist is vague, potentially intellectually di ...more

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Feb 16, 2019 Trudie rated it liked it

Shelves: australia, australian-nz-book-prizes, crime, read-2019, read-harder-2019, other-awards, non-fiction

This book has just been nominated to the Australian Stella Prize longlist for 2019. It deals with some of the events of the "Black Saturday" Victorian bushfires of February 2009. In this investigation Hooper narrows her focus to the Churchill fires and the search for and arrest of the arsonist. While the book starts with plenty of bushfire science and follows arson squad investigators to find the perpetrator it quickly becomes an interesting portrait of how the system deals with suspects that ar ...more

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Feb 19, 2019 Jaclyn (sixminutesforme) rated it it was amazing

“...I’ve nearly finished writing this book, which came in fits and starts, after persuading people to speak, and learning of material that was hard to access, then too hard to deal with. I have spent years trying to understand this man and what he did, my own motivation sometimes as indecipherable as his. And, I wondered, what if, having asked the police and lawyers dozens of questions, then more questions, trying to get tiny details right, I essentially ended up with little more than a series o ...more

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Dec 23, 2018 Ian Mond rated it it was amazing

The tenth anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires will be in two months. I remember my wife and I melting in our flat in Caulfield North as the temperature soared to 47 degrees. In Melbourne it was the hottest day on record for seventy years, preceded by days of sweltering blazing weather. Coupled with drought conditions and the State was already on high alert. Even so, I’m not sure anyone could imagine how bad it was going to be.

Chloe Hooper’s The Arsonist focuses on one of the outbreaks in ...more

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Oct 24, 2018 Cassandra Austin rated it it was amazing

4.5 stars. I've been waiting to have Black Saturday splayed before me and this is very, very good. But The Tall Man was exceptional. Difficult to judge an author against themselves! Well worth the read.

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Nov 25, 2018 Lisa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, australia, current-affairs, c21st

One of the most riveting sessions at the recent Word For Word Non Fiction festival in Geelong was Chloe Hooper in conversation with Lisa Waller from Deakin.
Chloe Hooper is the author of two novels, A Child’s Book of True Crime (2002) and The Engagement (2012, see my review) but I think it’s safe to say she is best-known for her incisive non-fiction. The Tall Man, Death and Life on Palm Island (2008) (see my review) won a swag of awards, and I won’t be surprised if The Arsonist does the same. It One of the most riveting sessions at the recent Word For Word Non Fiction festival in Geelong was Chloe Hooper in conversation with Lisa Waller from Deakin.
Chloe Hooper is the author of two novels, A Child’s Book of True Crime (2002) and The Engagement (2012, see my review) but I think it’s safe to say she is best-known for her incisive non-fiction. The Tall Man, Death and Life on Palm Island (2008) (see my review) won a swag of awards, and I won’t be surprised if The Arsonist does the same. It really is a stunning book, one which warns us of an apocalyptic future if we don’t act soon on climate change. (If it’s not already too late).
This is the blurb:
On the scorching February day in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, a man lit two fires in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno. In the Valley, where the rates of crime were the highest in the state, more than thirty people were known to police as firebugs. But the detectives soon found themselves on the trail of a man they didn’t know.
The Arsonist takes readers on the hunt for this man, and inside the strange puzzle of his mind. It is also the story of fire in this country, and of a community that owed its existence to that very element. The command of fire has defined and sustained us as a species – understanding its abuse will define our future.
A powerful real-life thriller written with Hooper’s trademark lyric detail and nuance, The Arsonist is a reminder that in an age of fire, all of us are gatekeepers.
While the Black Saturday bushfires claimed 180 lives altogether, injured over 400 people and caused incalculable loss and trauma as well, Hooper confines her investigation to the Churchill fires which were deliberately lit. (Most of the others were caused by power companies’ negligence). Written in three parts, the book engages the emotions of the reader immediately because in Part I ‘The Detectives’, the focus is entirely on the victims of the fire that swept through this dormitory suburb for the power workers of the Latrobe Valley electricity industry. As the arson detectives make their way through the eerie smoking landscape in the immediate aftermath of the fire, the stories of individuals impacted by the fires are revealed in all their harrowing and heartbreaking detail. At the festival, Hooper said that it was hard to work out what the appropriate distance was to tell these stories. She wanted to show readers what can happen in Australia, but she tried to be sparing all the same. (She had permission for the most specific of these stories). Many readers will find it quite overwhelming in places.
Part II is called ‘The Lawyers’ and the reader’s sympathies reluctantly shift.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/11/25/t... ...more

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Dec 08, 2018 Rebecca rated it really liked it

Shelves: aus-lit, crime, non-fiction, the-women

A compulsively readable retracing of the conditions - in the Latrobe Valley, and in the life of the convicted arsonist - which caused the devastating conflagration in Churchill, Victoria that burnt out an estimated 81,000 acres, and brought death to local residents and wildlife, and destruction to cherished homes and infrastructure.

Although the arsonist's mind is, in the end, unknowable, the individual stories of Black Saturday are the most affecting.

At page 221: "[The prosecutor] went on readi ...more

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Mar 22, 2019 Rachael Bettiens rated it it was amazing

Shelves: stellaprize2019

4.5 Stars rounded up.

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Dec 02, 2018 Calzean rated it really liked it

Shelves: author-australia, culture-australia, woman-author, true-crime

I'm not sure it was a good idea to read this book in the middle of yet another heat wave in the middle of the hottest, driest summer on record and on a day where the temperatures will be in the mid 40s.
Nonetheless this was a scary book. Scary on the level of uncontrollable violence unleashed by bushfires. Scary on how these fires can start. Scary on the complexity of people who are arsonists.
This is a different book to Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee made more complex due to the mental state of ...more

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Dec 18, 2018 Robert Lukins rated it really liked it

A fascinating and necessarily incomplete story; a facet of the disaster told in a wildly compelling style.

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Mar 04, 2019 Melissa rated it it was amazing

I cried a lot reading this. An immensely nuanced true crime account of the Black Friday fires in Victoria, that captures the horror of a fire beyond human control, the way society ostracises those who are different, and the unrelenting grief of those who lost so much.

Beyond even the knowledge that there will always be people who deliberately light fires – and that it’s a difficult crime to predict and prevent – what scares me most is that climate change is already creating drier, hotter conditi ...more

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Nov 16, 2018 Amanda rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

It's been quite a while since Hooper's very excellent "The Tall Man", so I was keen to dive right into this book.
While she does briefly mention the systems failures that resulted in so many deaths from one of Victoria's 'Black Saturday' fires, this book focuses on the man who was convicted of lighting it. Whether or not he fully grasps what he did and what the repercussions from his actions were is unlikely to ever be clear.
Her story is well paced and gripping, depicting the main characters well ...more

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Dec 01, 2018 Ellen rated it it was amazing

This is a lyrically rendered lesson in recounting a crime that's plaintive in its pointlessness. Unsatisfying in a way that's deeply authentic, Hooper has spun up a story that offers no easy insights yet is too idiosyncratic to be imagined. Beautifully written, fast flowing, and filled with feeling.

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Jan 27, 2019 Kate rated it really liked it

On February 7, 2009 - a day that would become known as Black Saturday - bushfires burned vast areas of Victoria (my home state). Extreme heat, high winds, low humidity, and severe drought combined to create the worst bushfire conditions in Australia's recorded history (the heat from the fires was equivalent to 500 atomic bombs exploding).

Black Saturday resulted in Australia’s highest ever loss of life from a bush-fire event. Across Victoria, 173 people died; more than one million animals (pets, On February 7, 2009 - a day that would become known as Black Saturday - bushfires burned vast areas of Victoria (my home state). Extreme heat, high winds, low humidity, and severe drought combined to create the worst bushfire conditions in Australia's recorded history (the heat from the fires was equivalent to 500 atomic bombs exploding).

Black Saturday resulted in Australia’s highest ever loss of life from a bush-fire event. Across Victoria, 173 people died; more than one million animals (pets, wildlife and stock) perished; over 2,000 houses and 3,500 structures were completely destroyed; and whole towns were razed (Kinglake, Marysville, Narbethong, Strathewen, and Flowerdale). The total area burnt was approximately half a million square kilomentres - to put that in perspective, the size of Spain.

The trauma can't be measured.

Some of the fires were deliberately lit and the man responsible for starting the Central Gippsland fires is the topic of Chloe Hooper's enthralling book, The Arsonist . Hooper gives a detailed account of the fires, the arson investigation, the arrest of a socially vulnerable man who had not previously been known to police, and his trial.

True crime, by its very nature, provides a compelling narrative but Hooper goes further than simply retelling events in The Arsonist. The detail in her writing is both poetic and terrifyingly clear -

The gum leaves, pliable up to a certain temperature, were like thousands of fingers pointing the way the fire had gone...

Burning birds fell from the sky, igniting the ground where they landed...The aluminium tray of a ute 'ran in rivulets on the ground'.

Hooper skilfully builds the tension (significant given that I knew what happened from the outset), and manages to include the necessary factual information without slipping into pure journalistic reporting -

The arsonist had had no need to set kindling amongst the blue gums. Each tree had made its own pyre. Every summer they drop their bark and branches and leaves, and each year without fire the piles grew higher, and they released toxins to ward off new growth that would compromise their fuel beds. No plant on the planet craves fire like the eucalypt: to live it needs to burn. 'Gasoline trees', the Americans call the globulus. Flames release gases that act like propellant, sending fireballs rolling across treetops. The shredding ribbon bark unfurls streamers of fire that travel kilometres on the wind.

What is most impressive about this book is that while Hooper covers so many critical aspects of bushfire and Black Saturday - from the role of fire in land management, and the skill of arson investigators, to Legal Aid, and the psychology of arsonists - she doesn't lose sight of the intense emotional aspect of the event. In examining questions about guilt, responsibility and ultimately remorse, Hooper considers the impact of the fires from every perspective, moving seamlessly between 'opposing' views - the parent grieving a lost child and the grief of the parent whose child lit the fire; the arson investigators, and the defence lawyers.

...we have too much of the wrong kind of fire rather than the burning regimes of the Aborigines, who controlled the environment with low-intensity, mosaic blazes. This intricate knowledge that once maintained the great southern forests is now largely lost. Instead we have feral wildfires: untameable, predatory, beastly. And we have people...who can, at a whim, bring these brutes to life.

The Arsonist has a conclusion of sorts. Brendan Sokaluk was put on trial, convicted, and remains in jail. However, Hooper's insightful observations give readers much to ponder -

An accident and a compulsion aren't that far apart. Neither is willed, both are only partially understood.

and ultimately we are reminded that there is no 'neat ending' for the people impacted by Black Saturday.

It's so human, though, the desire to see remorse. The Latin root of this word, remordēre, means 'to bite back'; it's the gnawing of one's conscience. We want the wrongdoer to acknowledge the pain of the bereaved and then to feel some of it. We invented hell for the purpose.

4/5 Has to be a Stella Prize front-runner. ...more

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Feb 13, 2019 Catherine Davison rated it it was amazing

Chloe Hooper has honoured all the people whose lives were lost or impacted by this senseless fire setting. She writes in a dignified and enthralling way never ghoulish, never tasteless, hers is a steady hand on the tiller as she tries to navigate a course to shed light on the reasons why this man did what he did. I had put off reading this thinking it would be too difficult to read but it should be read, by all Australians and perhaps lessons might be learned so loners like Sokaluk get treatment ...more

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Feb 02, 2019 Shirley Bateman rated it it was amazing

A stunning analysis of the minds and motivations of arsonists. I felt conflicted throughout. At first, it was easy to deeply dislike Brendan Sokaluk, but at times, I felt sympathy for him. His parents loved him but he was constantly bullied at school and work. His autism and learning difficulties made it very hard to fit in.

Chloe Hooper weaves together all parts of the story with a journalistic perspective. She brilliantly depicts the absolute devastation wreaked by bushfires on communities.

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Feb 05, 2019 Rick Morton rated it it was amazing

Haunting and desperately sad and yet there is so much humanity in there. So much. The best writing shows us into the world of nuance and holds us there. Chloe did just that.

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Jan 09, 2019 Chee Chee rated it really liked it

Compelling and terrifying. In particular, her retelling of the Churchill fire’s impact on families was absolutely devastating.

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Dec 12, 2018 Ron Brown rated it it was amazing

Hooper is writer of substance, her ability to describe characters and situations engages the reader fully. Her descriptions of the fire ruined country are both descriptive and emotional. The opening pages of this book are disturbing and difficult to read. Her ability to capture the voice of the survivors is devastating to read. I had to stop at times to take a breath. Her writing presents portraits of real decent people dealing with shocking moments in their otherwise normal lives. Her accounts ...more

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Jan 02, 2019 Gayle Parker rated it really liked it

What a gripping engrossing book
A joy to read despite the dark nature of the subject

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Dec 25, 2018 Jen Welch rated it it was amazing

The research and investigation that has been undertaken for this book is brilliant. What exceeds this is the compassion, sensitivity and structured interpretation of such massive devastation. Hooper has sieved through so much to try to make sense of so much trauma.

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Nov 27, 2018 Shereen Lang rated it it was amazing

At times absolutely harrowing, this is an extremely well drawn account of a bushfire and its devastating effects, which is perhaps less successful at portraying the troubled man at the centre of it all.
I found the survivors' stories really poignant and at times hard to read. I found myself reading the same lines over and over because I couldn't believe the vastness of the damage and the impact on so many lives. It was definitely tough getting through the survivor statements, and the book's endin ...more

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Nov 25, 2018 Ruth rated it really liked it

This was my first Chloe Hooper and I was really blown away. It reminded me greatly of Helen Garner's 'This House of Grief' which is my way of saying that it's exceptional non-fiction. Chloe really put you in the moment at all points of this story. She wrote about harrowing situations in a way that's both empathetic but removed enough that you don't feel traumatised by the act of reading. Highly recommended reading for all Australians.

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Jan 24, 2019 Kemran rated it really liked it

Why did he do it? A simple question, which Chloe Hooper provides a complex answer to. Brendan Sokaluk was found guilty of lighting fires near the east Victorian town of Churchill on what has infamously become known as ‘Black Saturday’, 2009. The Churchill fires killed eleven people, destroyed dozens of homes and incinerated thousands of hectares of forest. Not only does Hooper explore the mind of the arsonist, but the social context that could have caused him to become one. It’s not just Brendan Why did he do it? A simple question, which Chloe Hooper provides a complex answer to. Brendan Sokaluk was found guilty of lighting fires near the east Victorian town of Churchill on what has infamously become known as ‘Black Saturday’, 2009. The Churchill fires killed eleven people, destroyed dozens of homes and incinerated thousands of hectares of forest. Not only does Hooper explore the mind of the arsonist, but the social context that could have caused him to become one. It’s not just Brendan Sokaluk that’s on trial but the town of Churchill.

In the same objective style that Hooper mastered in the ‘Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island’, she sympathetically portrays the actors in this tragedy. The police investigators, prosecution, defense, firefighters, victims of the arson, Brendan’s parents and Brendan himself.

The investigators are fastidious and professional. The prosecutors: dedicated and honourable. The defence: compassionate and committed. Brendan’s parents, loyal and caring. And Brendan? Brendan is complex, despite being considered a simpleton throughout his life. During the trial he was diagnosed with autism and having a mild intellectual disability. The prosecution portrays him as cunning and shrewd, playing up his disabilities to his advantage. Whereas the defense characterise him as naive. Hooper’s conclusion – he is both those things. Just as a child can be crafty and gullible.

Brendan was mercilessly bullied through school. And in a small town like Churchill, there is no starting fresh as an adult. He was cast out of every social group he tried to join and couldn’t maintain employment. Even in a cosmopolitan metropolis, people fail to accommodate autism and disability. In Churchill, Brendan was practically subhuman. He’s a loner who spent his days collecting scrap metal and watching children’s television. If anyone had reason to hate Churchill, and want to destroy the place, it was Brendan.

Although, Hooper admits that accidental causes of fire were responsible for more deaths on Black Saturday across the state than those ignited by arsonists, writing about privatised energy companies failing to maintain electricity networks to maximise profits, hardly makes for riveting reading. Conversely, the Arsonist is enthralling. Hooper chooses her words carefully, applying them with precision and parsimony. The characters are weaved through the fires, investigation and trial. Reading the Arsonist makes you want to be a better person. The kind of person who withholds judgement of others, and tries to understand where they are coming from.
...more

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Feb 05, 2019 Jennifer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: australia, mystery-detective, non-fiction, real-crime

I think bushfires are the single biggest fear of most Australians when it comes to living in the country. The intensity and frequency of a catastrophic bush fires means it is not only those living in the midst of forests that fear them now.

This is compelling reading. Also thought provoking. Hopper takes different perspectives of those involved at different stages of the process: initial investigation, defence work, court case.

Reading this I had the tense sickening feeling in my gut. The horror ...more

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Feb 15, 2019 Hannah Banks rated it it was amazing

This book wowed me!

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Feb 24, 2019 Angelique Simonsen rated it liked it · review of another edition

This was easy to read but so so sad for the families etc who were affected. I was struck by the awful scenes as the fire raged through. So hard for me to visualize the absolute devastation.
Had to cry when the two brothers decided to forget saving the house and made a run for it only to be killed in their vehicle while the fire left their house untouched

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Jan 30, 2019 Carly rated it it was amazing

My heart goes out to anyone who survived and anyone who lost a loved one in the Black Saturday fires.

I can remember seeing the news about Black Saturday and hearing the stories coming out of Victoria. They were the kind of stories that change your understanding of the world, even a decade later, as people recounted their survivals, and the trail of destruction told stories of lives lost.

Chloe Hooper tells some of these stories as she recounts the events of Black Saturday in the La Trobe Valley ...more

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Jan 24, 2019 Suzie rated it liked it

Shelves: australian, non-fiction

3 1/2 stars. An interesting read, but frustrating at times. Not sure what I expected, something meatier maybe, with stronger focus on the investigation and personal accounts, and less of the lawyer/courtroom stuff

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About Chloe Hooper

Chloe Hooper

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Chloe Hooper is an Australian author. Her first novel, A Child’s Book of True Crime (2002), was short-listed for the Orange Prize for Literature and was a New York Times Notable Book. In 2005, she turned to reportage and the next year won a Walkley Award for her writing on the death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee on Palm Island, an Aboriginal community off the north-east coast of Australia. The T ...more