Incendiary (original 2005; edition 2005)

Having read and loved 'The Other Hand' by Chris Cleave, I was keen to read his first novel, 'Incendiary', and snapped it up when I saw it on sale for £2 at my local charity shop.

The book won several respectable prizes when it was first published and is an international best seller. The author has published three books to date which have all been well-received in literary circles.

The blurb

Instead of having a traditional blurb on the back page a nameless narrator tells the reader that she's not a perfect mother, that she cheated and was punished but she loved her child and she will tell you the perfect truth. While this is attention-grabbing, it doesn't actually tell you very much. If you are happily intrigued and don't want to know any more, I suggest you skip over the next section...and possibly the whole body of the review!

This lack of information is a marketing device that has presumably served Cleave well as his second book has less guidance than this one and the blurb for his third book simply states that it is 'about the limits of human endurance, both physical and emotional'. (Apparently it's actually about Olympic cycling.)

The idea

While engaging in an illicit liaison, a woman loses her husband and son in a terrorist attack on a premiership football match. She struggles to cope with her bereavement and her sense of guilt and develops relationships with two journalists and a senior police officer who all have their own connections to the attack and to her. In an effort to prevent more "boy-shaped holes" being made in the world she begins to write a letter to Osama Bin Laden (and, as she reassures him, western leaders, too). After all, while she recognises that The Sun would simply dismiss him as EVIL, she is sure that if he only understood the pain he was causing then he would stop blowing up boys. This book is her letter.

Writing a letter

The narrator is working class and lives in Bethnal Green. This is a significant point in itself as much is made in the novel about the different experiences, expectations and treatment of working class and middle class people. Presumably in order to make this background clear, Cleve writes how he feels a woman in this situation in life might. This means that commas are frequently absent and many sentences deliberately 'run on', by which I mean there are also a number of full stops which are simply missing. Initially this irritated me greatly, partly because of my teaching background and partly because punctuation exists for a reason and I did sometimes have to reread bits to make sense of the narrative. Gradually I stopped noticing this so much, although the repeated use of "would of" and "could of" (instead of "would have" and "could have") continued to grate until the end! The narrator also sometimes writes in capital letters when writing something she imagines The Sun using as a headline. Some readers may find this attempt at verisimilitude irritating or even patronising (working class = uneducated, tabloid reading etc.) but it may be worth persevering if your complaint is the former rather than the latter. If it is the latter, you are likely to find that it only gets worse.

Despite being uneducated the narrator is evidently meant to be wise and witty and makes effective use of metaphor and simile to help describe her world. The narrative is a pleasure to read as the prose has a rhythm of its own even as it describes horrible things.

Rather than organising the letter into chapters there are simply four sections, one for each season. This seems very appropriate as the story begins in Spring, the season associated with new lives and hope, and gets darker as the seasons change and move closer to winter. The sections are not of equal length and by the time I reached Summer I had forgotten I was reading a section headed Spring! The lack of chapters means it can be difficult to find a good point to put the book down. It also reflects the slightly meandering nature of the story, which is largely chronological but follows the narrator's thought processes as much as actual events. I found this style quite appealing as it felt very immediate and raw, like I was really experiencing the narrator's thoughts.

For some reason, perhaps to reinforce that this is a diary-style piece of writing, dialogue is prefaced by dashes rather than being identified by speech marks. Again, this was a minor irritation until I became used to it.

Writing a woman

Chris Cleave, a male writer, places himself in the mind of a female character, which is no mean feat when imagining her losing her family, having sex and losing her mind. I felt that he did this successfully: if I did not know from reading his previous book that this was a male writer I would not have guessed.

Writing tragedy

I found the book became more difficult as it developed. The initial dramatic events are shocking but plausible. However, as the narrative progresses and the narrator's relationships developed I did not find those developments particularly convincing. I thought some of the changes were almost surreal and felt that if I could not believe in what the characters were saying and doing then I could not believe in the story. The journalists, Petra and Jasper, were alternately lovely and awful while often acting rather bizarrely. I have never been in any of the situations the book describes so I could be mistaken about their plausibility but for me this detracted from my enjoyment.

I also felt that Cleave was using the characters' relationships to make some points about class which I personally was not particularly interested in. Or rather, the way in which the narrator repeatedly commented on class became a little irksome to me.

More interesting is the erosion of civil liberties that follow the initial incident and how the population reacts. London's reactions to the earlier events and particularly the twist in the middle - which is probably easy to anticipate if you think about it but I didn't and found it shocking - were convincing and very, very frightening. The book certainly develops in tension as it continues and the ending is quite startling as well as sad.

Despite the plot's focus on a horrific event and its terrible consequences, there is a good amount of humour in the narration, which is essential to stop this becoming completely bleak and depressing (everyone is out for themselves or mad or both). For instance: 'This is London Osama so if I do ever forget to mention the weather you just imagine it's raining and cold and you won't be far off.' The narrator's attempts to converse with the international terrorist that she refers to simply as Osama become increasingly surreal as the narrative continues and she comments on links and divisions between them, theorising about the possibility of him stacking shelves in Tesco's and managing not to behead his fellow workers and record their executions. In this way the humour effectively builds tension as well as helping to release it as the reader can see how tenuous the narrator's grip on reality has become.

Some difficulties

I like to read about characters I can respect or perhaps empathise with to some degree, but none of the main characters in this story are particularly nice and and at times they are all utterly repellent. For instance, I am not sure why Cleave chooses to have his narrator fornicating adulterously when the incident happens; I assume it is to help explain her descent into post-traumatic stress disorder, but it means the reader is likely to begin the book by feeling, at best, ambivalent towards a wife who cheats on her husband and leaves her young son alone at home to go to the pub. (Cleave justifies this behaviour in a number of ways but I still found it rather disconcerting.)

In a horrible coincidence, 'Incendiary' was released to UK bookshops on on July 7th 2005 - the date of terrorist attacks on London tubes and buses (7/7). Given the proximity of the book to the attacks, some reviewers have suggested that Cleave exaggerates the reaction of politicians and public in her fiction. Reading about the restrictions in place in the novel I felt that perhaps Cleave did have rather less faith in Londoners than he could have done. Cleave has noted that there is a difference in magnitude between the event he imagines and the events of 7/7, and has suggested that there are more similarities than we might, as a society, like to admit. Regardless, when I was reading the book it reminded me more of a dystopian vision of the future - like we find in Orwell's '1984' or Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' - than a feasible reality in today's England. However, that may well be just my naivety speaking and the measures taken in the novel did not seem completely implausible. Furthermore, when comparing the developments in London to the developments in the characters' relationships the former began to seem positively convincing!

Perhaps the biggest problem is simply the bleakness of Cleave's vision. Despite the often almost jaunty tone in which the nameless narrator recounts what happens to her, she gradually sickens of the world around her - and so does the reader - until she, and we, are forced to question to what extent this is a world worth saving. This is not a cheery beach read and such pessimism will not suit all tastes.

The film

There is a film based on the novel but a quick read of the synopsis confirms that it takes a significantly different direction to the book, so if you have seen and enjoyed the film you will want to be aware that the book is much darker.

Conclusions

I am still not entirely sure what I thought of this book. It was a powerful and compelling read - I read it in two days - which was beautifully written despite the deliberately uneducated style of narration. The subject matter is an important one and Cleave makes valuable points about the dangers inherent in an emotional response to terrorism. The rush of events compels you onwards and the moments of humour sparkle in what is otherwise really rather grim reading. I think it is definitely worth reading, but 'enjoyment' is not quite the result. In a word: disturbing.

Most readers seem to love it or hate it, which is worth £7.99 of anyone's money. (Even if you hate it you'll have plenty to think about and to say about it.) This seems to be the standard price point for a book of this sort of format and length (338 pages) although it is available for less in all the usual places online. Although I still can't quite decide if I liked it, I found it very powerful and am glad that I read it. I will continue to keep an eye out for other books by Cleave and to recommend 'The Other Hand' in particular.

Read this if:

- you are interested in powerful stories that deal with loss, grief and madness;
- you have enjoyed other books by Cleave due to his writing style, or enjoy books which make poetic use of prose;
- you are interested in reading about the impact terrorism can have on places and lives.

Avoid this if:

- deliberate lack of punctuation and grammatical errors are likely to annoy you to the extent that you cannot enjoy the story they help to shape;
- you are of a particularly sensitive or squeamish disposition as there is some description of the dead and dying (this is graphic without being gory so my sensitive stomach was fine);
- you like a simple story with at least one primary character you can like or admire without significant reservations. ( )

With Incendiary, the reader is given a fictionalized London equivalent to 9/11, in this case “May Day”, an attack on a stadium full of fans attending an Arsenal football match. Among the one thousand victims are a woman’s husband and young son. Throughout the novel which includes plaintive remarks directed to the perpetrator, Osama bin Laden, the woman struggles to find reason to carry on. Sometimes it is only the presence of Mr. Rabbit, a surviving toy imbued with her son’s blood that allows her to navigate life after the tragedy. Only when the woman realizes that officials knew of the attack ahead of time does she find a purpose in trying to expose a government operating in collateral damage mode. Unsuccessful, of course, she ultimately realizes that her love for her son is larger than her anger, sadness, or revenge and that is her final message to bin Laden and his like. Published in 2005, this novel will forever be part of a fixed number of books framed by the 9/11 attack and the killing of Osama bin Laden. However, as just recently witnessed by the Boston Marathon bombings, there will always be a need for a Mr. Rabbit in whatever form it may take shape. ( )

So now I have read all three of Chris Cleave's novels. He is undoubtedly a talented and extraordinary writer, and his novels are fascinating and compelling not just because of characters or plot, but because at the heart of each novel is "an ethical question about how we live" (see Goodreads interview with the author here: http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/793.Chris_Cleave).

Like Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, Incendiary is written in the form of one long letter (and there the similarity ends) from a working-class woman in London to Osama bin Laden, in the wake of a terrorist attack that killed her husband and four-year-old son. Like Rebecca (again, end of comparison), the reader never learns the narrator/letter-writer's name. We do learn that she is sassy, resourceful, doesn't use commas, and, as they say in England, is losing the plot after the death of her husband and son; especially toward the end of the novel, she experiences vivid hallucinations. Her grief is complicated by guilt; like Chris Cleave's other novels, this one too features infidelity, and the narrator was in the act at the time that her husband and son were blown up while attending a soccer/football game.

What Cleave does especially effectively in this novel is the before-and-after: what she had and what she lost. Despite the infidelity, it's clear she loved her husband and son. In the aftermath of their death in the attack, she continues to see Jasper Black (who enters his own downward spiral), and simultaneously becomes involved with her new employer, her husband's former boss in the Metropolitan Police. Through the narrator's eyes and voice, we see her, the people she knows, and all of London begin to come undone. Her grief, and her observations of the changes in the city around her, are the strongest part of the book.

From Cleave's website: "What use is there in fiction in times like these?....I love fiction. I love writing, because it helps me think. And I love reading, because it lets me see how other people think. I believe that the good-humoured and effortful struggle to understand one another’s lives is at worst a good way to pass long journeys, and at best an antidote to violence." (http://www.chriscleave.com/books/incendiary/the-story-behind-incendiary/)

Guardian review:
Daily">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jul/16/featuresreviews.guardianreview7

Daily Beast review:
Quotes">http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2005/07/31/dear-osama-bin-laden.html

Quotes:

Her voice was amazing. It was comedy posh. It was the sort of voice corgis would obey without question. (106)

It was one of those nights where the day can't come soon enough. (138)

The emptiness inside me was howling like the wind round tall buildings. (139)

It was an incendiary child and when it dreamed it dreamed of sparks. (196)

And from inside all the houses you heard mums singing their children to sleep and their love was stronger than bombs. (210)

Love is not surrender...love is furious and brave and loud...it will echo till the end of time it is more deafening than bombs. (237) ( )

Not my usual kind of book, so I was surprised that I liked it as much as I did. I found it a little difficult to connect with nameless characters, though, but other than that, a really interesting read. ( )

The narrator is a woman whose husband and little boy are killed when terrorists bomb a London soccer stadium. She writes of the aftermath in a letter to Osama bin Laden . Good read, but intense and graphic. ( )