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Spark
“I have spent years going over our past, untangling memories from dreams, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when fate sealed. The easiest place to start is with the most blatant our mother, Jenny, kept the matchbooks in the junk drawer.”So begins Andrea and her brother Delphie’s story, a story of the light and darkness visited upon their lives by the flaring of one small flame.Twenty years after pyromaniac Delphie kills a family of four, he is released from prison to Andrea’s care. Soon after, she finds her carefully ordered life coming apart. Her efforts to keep her brother on a steady path lead her off course, into the secret corners of New York, where danger is difficult to gauge and a spark, once ignited, is hard to extinguish."An absorbing and nuanced character study."-- BOOKLIST“It's clear to me that Courtney Elizabeth Mauk is going to be an important new voice of her generation."—Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake“In Spark, Courtney Elizabeth Mauk has somehow managed to write a book that’s both chilling and heart-rending. It’s a masterfully unnerving portrait of of a family, of a life, of a mind. Her artfully distanced prose gets under your skin like little else. After you pick this book up, it won’t put you down.”—Kelly Braffet, author of Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving“Page by beautifully written page, Courtney Elizabeth Mauk careens us into a world where, in our misguided efforts to protect those we love, we lose sight of all boundaries. Spark is a powerful novel not because it dares to go into dark territories but because it vividly illuminates the very ordinary ways we might lose ourselves in the effort to save others from potential errors. Mauk has created a mature debut where love, obligation, fear, desire, and doubt twist in unpredictable and surprising turns.”—Victoria Redel, author of The Border of Truth“Spark is a stunning debut—smart, sexy, and masterfully paced. You won’t be able to put it down.”—Thorn Kief Hillsbery, author of War Boy and What We Do Is Secret
- GenresFiction
228 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2012
1 person is currently reading
681 people want to read
About the author
Courtney Elizabeth Mauk
4 books47 followersCourtney Elizabeth Mauk is the author of three novels: THE SPECIAL POWER OF RESTORING LOST THINGS, ORION'S DAUGHTERS, and SPARK. She lives in New York City with her husband and son.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 30, 2012
I picked up Courtney Elizabeth Mauk's debut novel SPARK in the early evening, expecting to read a few pages and did not put it down again until I had finished it three+ hours later. It's a glorious, fast-paced read, filled with beautiful language, tightly-written scenes, and unforgettable characters.
For all of her life, Andrea has known one thing for sure: she was born to save her brother's life. As such, she is the ultimate codependent, who only really comes to life when her brother is nearby so that she might save him. In fact, it seems as though she has been in a chrysalis all the years he has been away from her and it is not until he comes back into her life that her carefully wound, seemingly happy life, begins to unfurl. And then it begins to unwind and unwind it does.
At first, Andrea seems tentative about having her recovering pyromaniac brother to come and live with her and her boyfriend, and yet she prepares the apartment as one would do for a new infant; nesting and getting rid of anything that might cause him harm. Once he moves in, she takes things even farther, pushing away her boyfriend so that he might not do the harm she perceives him and his work capable of.
Essentially, she becomes her brother's mother and following in her own mother's footsteps; she is codependent, a helicopter parent. She does not and cannot exist without her brother and his disease.
She also cannot live without his fire. Even though he has spent the past 20 years reforming himself, she doesn't believe that he is truly healed and when the papers start reporting suspicious fires around the city, she convinces herself it is him. Even when she can find no proof in his room or on his person, she believes he is guilty. She even goes so far to bring matches back into the house, as though to tempt him and have him fail, because like most codependents, she is as addicted to his disease as he is and as much as she wants to save him, she can't fully live without the threat of him falling back into illness and danger.
Still, Andrea does find an outlet in two other women who people her world. First, there is Rain an aging actress whose dog she walks. Rain is hedonistic, independent, full of love and life. She is everything that Andrea is not. And yet even though Rain is fully developed, Andrea still cannot resist the urge to sometimes take care of Rain. To coddle her. To climb into bed and spoon her, as her sense of boundaries are so horribly skewed.
And then there is Sally, the night person. Andrea's dark other half. She meets Sally while out walking one night and soon becomes addicted to the dangerous and exciting life Sally offers. Sally may or may not truly exist, but what is clear is that she represents both the unraveling of Andrea's mind and also her opportunity for escape. She can choose to go on worrying over her brother and her mother, or she can embrace this darker, more carefree side of herself and let go.
You, my friend, will have to read the book to see what she decides.
Read it.
For all of her life, Andrea has known one thing for sure: she was born to save her brother's life. As such, she is the ultimate codependent, who only really comes to life when her brother is nearby so that she might save him. In fact, it seems as though she has been in a chrysalis all the years he has been away from her and it is not until he comes back into her life that her carefully wound, seemingly happy life, begins to unfurl. And then it begins to unwind and unwind it does.
At first, Andrea seems tentative about having her recovering pyromaniac brother to come and live with her and her boyfriend, and yet she prepares the apartment as one would do for a new infant; nesting and getting rid of anything that might cause him harm. Once he moves in, she takes things even farther, pushing away her boyfriend so that he might not do the harm she perceives him and his work capable of.
Essentially, she becomes her brother's mother and following in her own mother's footsteps; she is codependent, a helicopter parent. She does not and cannot exist without her brother and his disease.
She also cannot live without his fire. Even though he has spent the past 20 years reforming himself, she doesn't believe that he is truly healed and when the papers start reporting suspicious fires around the city, she convinces herself it is him. Even when she can find no proof in his room or on his person, she believes he is guilty. She even goes so far to bring matches back into the house, as though to tempt him and have him fail, because like most codependents, she is as addicted to his disease as he is and as much as she wants to save him, she can't fully live without the threat of him falling back into illness and danger.
Still, Andrea does find an outlet in two other women who people her world. First, there is Rain an aging actress whose dog she walks. Rain is hedonistic, independent, full of love and life. She is everything that Andrea is not. And yet even though Rain is fully developed, Andrea still cannot resist the urge to sometimes take care of Rain. To coddle her. To climb into bed and spoon her, as her sense of boundaries are so horribly skewed.
And then there is Sally, the night person. Andrea's dark other half. She meets Sally while out walking one night and soon becomes addicted to the dangerous and exciting life Sally offers. Sally may or may not truly exist, but what is clear is that she represents both the unraveling of Andrea's mind and also her opportunity for escape. She can choose to go on worrying over her brother and her mother, or she can embrace this darker, more carefree side of herself and let go.
You, my friend, will have to read the book to see what she decides.
Read it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 16, 2012
SPARK is a somewhat disorienting little book. What starts out as a fairly straightforward story turns into a darker, mysterious world.
The trouble I had with these mysterious occurrences was that I wasn't entirely sure that they were real. Now, maybe the issue is that I was reading the book while tired, before bed, and maybe there were clues that I did not notice. If Mauk intended to makes these experiences surreal, I cannot say for certain if that's how they come across.
I'd be curious to hear other readers' impressions. SPARK is definitely a novel that merits discussion, and I hope that it gets it.
(My full review appears on Glorified Love Letters.)
The trouble I had with these mysterious occurrences was that I wasn't entirely sure that they were real. Now, maybe the issue is that I was reading the book while tired, before bed, and maybe there were clues that I did not notice. If Mauk intended to makes these experiences surreal, I cannot say for certain if that's how they come across.
I'd be curious to hear other readers' impressions. SPARK is definitely a novel that merits discussion, and I hope that it gets it.
(My full review appears on Glorified Love Letters.)
November 18, 2012
This book had a lot of buzz. Maybe I shouldn't have read the book jacket, but it felt like a first novel after an MFA program--good writing, sexy premise (pyromaniac brother gets paroled), but not enough real life in the story. I didn't feel all the love she professed for the brother, and I didn't understand the mysterious NYC cabaret.
December 11, 2012
I gave this book 4.15/5 stars at InsatiableBooksluts.com. Engine Books provided an electronic review copy.
Review excerpt:
"It struck me as I was digesting this book that it reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye in some ways–please, please don’t let that put you off of the book if you have no love for Catcher, as I don’t mean that in a stylistic way. I feel like this is the book Phoebe Caulfield might have written twenty years later, if and when (it’s a when, isn’t it?) she had to take Holden in. A troubled brother finally trying to put his nose down and just adjust, to finally be adjusted; the sister who is coming unraveled because she has never been able to quiet all of the echoes of her brother’s disturbance. They’ve gotten into her at a subatomic level, and his reappearance has activated them.
This novel is relentless. Mauk pulls no punches, nor does she ever slip on the rose-colored glasses to soothe us from all of the shit going down. She deals with family problems and secrets in a raw way that would make people with fucked-up families shudder in recognition. Her characters interact gorgeously; these are characters that deeply understand their own motivations.
I did find a few parts of the novel to be a bit–-mistimed, maybe? It’s hard to say which ones in a review because I don’t want to give anything away toward the end. I remember frowning at Andrea for re-asking Delphie a question on a matter that they had just extensively hashed out. Maybe I missed something subtle that made that exchange make more sense, but the re-asking of that question made the scene seem really anticlimactic. Mostly, though, I thought the execution of the story to be quite smooth."
See the full review at InsatiableBooksluts.com.
Review excerpt:
"It struck me as I was digesting this book that it reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye in some ways–please, please don’t let that put you off of the book if you have no love for Catcher, as I don’t mean that in a stylistic way. I feel like this is the book Phoebe Caulfield might have written twenty years later, if and when (it’s a when, isn’t it?) she had to take Holden in. A troubled brother finally trying to put his nose down and just adjust, to finally be adjusted; the sister who is coming unraveled because she has never been able to quiet all of the echoes of her brother’s disturbance. They’ve gotten into her at a subatomic level, and his reappearance has activated them.
This novel is relentless. Mauk pulls no punches, nor does she ever slip on the rose-colored glasses to soothe us from all of the shit going down. She deals with family problems and secrets in a raw way that would make people with fucked-up families shudder in recognition. Her characters interact gorgeously; these are characters that deeply understand their own motivations.
I did find a few parts of the novel to be a bit–-mistimed, maybe? It’s hard to say which ones in a review because I don’t want to give anything away toward the end. I remember frowning at Andrea for re-asking Delphie a question on a matter that they had just extensively hashed out. Maybe I missed something subtle that made that exchange make more sense, but the re-asking of that question made the scene seem really anticlimactic. Mostly, though, I thought the execution of the story to be quite smooth."
See the full review at InsatiableBooksluts.com.
April 22, 2013
“Before us Manhattan, breathtaking in its proportions, is just beginning to stir—mumbling, stretching, opening its eyes, whatever went on in darkness now part of dream, forgotten.”
Spark is a compelling and honest novel about the overpowering need to follow our desires and impulses, which lead to the eventual fallout of relationships due to the lack of intertwining ideas. Courtney Elizabeth Mauk identifies the stirring darkness within her characters and how they attempt to enlighten themselves but fail to—as seen through the narrator Andrea when she takes in Delphie, her pyromaniac brother who has just been released from prison for killing four people in a house fire. She struggles to find herself and her place once more while still attempting to protect Delphie all the same but doesn’t realize her mistakes in doing so.
Mauk pays great attention to detail. She brings the novel, the city and the characters to life, describing her scenes with beautiful and enticing language that leave the reader wanting more. Mauk reels us into her story with stunning sentences like, “The volatility stops his heart, and then his pulse races ahead, welcoming the sweet deliciousness, the addictive bravado of desire inextricable from danger,” and “I watched him from my window for the spark, loving him more than ever even though he had never been so far away.”
Throughout the novel, Mauk fully develops her characters so that they feel completely real. It is one of the stronger features of the novel. She builds characters of true colors, being honest with each one and letting their flaws be known from the very beginning.
By Sophean Soeun
Spark is a compelling and honest novel about the overpowering need to follow our desires and impulses, which lead to the eventual fallout of relationships due to the lack of intertwining ideas. Courtney Elizabeth Mauk identifies the stirring darkness within her characters and how they attempt to enlighten themselves but fail to—as seen through the narrator Andrea when she takes in Delphie, her pyromaniac brother who has just been released from prison for killing four people in a house fire. She struggles to find herself and her place once more while still attempting to protect Delphie all the same but doesn’t realize her mistakes in doing so.
Mauk pays great attention to detail. She brings the novel, the city and the characters to life, describing her scenes with beautiful and enticing language that leave the reader wanting more. Mauk reels us into her story with stunning sentences like, “The volatility stops his heart, and then his pulse races ahead, welcoming the sweet deliciousness, the addictive bravado of desire inextricable from danger,” and “I watched him from my window for the spark, loving him more than ever even though he had never been so far away.”
Throughout the novel, Mauk fully develops her characters so that they feel completely real. It is one of the stronger features of the novel. She builds characters of true colors, being honest with each one and letting their flaws be known from the very beginning.
By Sophean Soeun
April 2, 2013
This debut novel's forays into a strange, almost magical-seeming, nocturnal New York, reminded me of another book I really love, David Schickler's Kissing in Manhattan. The protagonist, Andrea, makes for a prickly and engaging focus to the novel: she's likable but at the same time, her motivations are not always legible or logical to the reader. I like this - she feels alive to me. On the surface, the story is about the return of Andrea's pyromaniac brother Delphie to society (and his sister's apartment), and a lot of the novel's suspense comes from the anxiety and sibling tension that arises from this situation, especially after a series of fires are reported in Brooklyn. At a few moments the sibling tension felt overly spelled out to me (particularly in the therapeutic subplot). However, I saw the book more as an exploration of Andrea's passion, her desire to explore something dark and weird behind the facades of the city -- and in herself. Seeking her own strength through a controlled burn of her own life. This novel foretells a blazing talent (last fire metaphor), and I'll be looking forward to reading whatever this exciting young writer does next.
June 3, 2013
Spark is aptly named, literally and figuratively. Andrea is devoted to her pyromaniac brother and takes him in when he leaves prison. But her feelings about him and other characters break boundaries, igniting possibilities and potential danger. The story has a fascinating premise, and Mauk's literary abilities are obvious. I especially enjoyed the the mysterious nightwalker, who, real or not, introduces options to Andrea. This is a wonderful book.
October 5, 2018
(4.3)Well...I have to say this book was interesting. I wasn't so sure if I would like it or not, but by the end of the book I enjoyed reading it. I have to say that I really loved Sally. She was just described so well and I would love to know someone like Sally. Rain, I just loved reading about her. All in all pretty good book.
Want to read
October 9, 2012from publisher
February 28, 2013
Really enjoyed this book! Lovely depictions of New York life, and well-fleshed out characters.
March 1, 2013
Original plot, lovely descriptions of New York City, precise prose... very happy I read it.
November 26, 2017
I didn't expect to read this book in one day but I couldn't put it down. I loved all the characters.
June 30, 2013
A tight little novel with engaging subject matter and a refreshing depiction of New York.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews