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3.23 AVERAGE
3.23 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I'm still digesting my thoughts on this beautifully written, but flawed, book. The book was nothing like what I expected, and that's not a bad thing at all. It reminded me why I avoid reviews until I've finished a book.
I finished reading The Incendiaries a week ago, and I still don't know how to write this review. It's haunting. Entrancing. Captivating. It's also difficult to read. Highly polarizing. I want to yell at the book that this is not how faith works. This is not what Christianity is! And yet I identify. I've asked these questions. I've thought these thoughts.
Time is fractured--the story is told in three voices, each with different starting points. They meander between present and past, through actual and imagined happenings (in the novel's world), and sometimes it's not very clear what is real, what is imagined, and what is just perceived. It's slightly unconventional, but it works. The only thing I can seriously fault it for is the lack of quotation marks a la Cormac McCarthy.
John Leal's story is told in the third person. It starts from way before, from the North Korean prison that sowed the seeds of his cultic behaviour. They're small sound-bites, little flashes of background. If they weren't there, you probably wouldn't notice, since his story also plays out in the other narratives.
Will Kendall tells his own story in the first person. His is the easiest to follow, and the voice that I identified with the most--not his entitled white male persona (I love you, you can't leave me), but his struggles with faith (Are you real, God? If you're real, why aren't you speaking to me?). His story starts with his reimagining of the Phipps building bombing, his effort to understand. Then he backtracks to the start of his relationship to Phoebe, from when they first met and pushes forward to the present, to the aftermath of the bombing, his implication in it because of his links to the cult. Will is a Nice Guy, and his relationship with Phoebe is problematic. Even though it starts off sweet, it turns obsessive, delusional and abusive. Will is remorseful after the fact, but does that ever really change anything?
Phoebe Lin's narrative is the most difficult to read. It often starts off in the third person and meanders into the first, often flitting between present and past with little notice. I cannot tell if it is someone else telling her story, or if she has multiple personalities she shifts between (she sometimes refers to herself by her Korean name, Haejin). She's drawn to the cult for what it purports to offer: a way to cleanse her soul of guilt.
The Incendiaries is raw, offering up a fractured, misguided understanding of Christianity and faith. Will yells into the void for a God he does not believe in anymore. Phoebe performs penance for the things she cannot forgive herself for. John just wants the world to burn for its sins.
It's also the love story of two people whose religious journeys are diametrically opposed: Will's faith had led to action, but ultimately left him dry and unfulfilled whilst Phoebe hopes that her actions will lead to faith in hopes of forgiveness from her guilt. It's a relationship doomed from the start, inherently incendiary.
Note: I received a digital copy of this book from Edelweiss. I was given the book with no expectation of a positive review and the review is my own.
Time is fractured--the story is told in three voices, each with different starting points. They meander between present and past, through actual and imagined happenings (in the novel's world), and sometimes it's not very clear what is real, what is imagined, and what is just perceived. It's slightly unconventional, but it works. The only thing I can seriously fault it for is the lack of quotation marks a la Cormac McCarthy.
John Leal's story is told in the third person. It starts from way before, from the North Korean prison that sowed the seeds of his cultic behaviour. They're small sound-bites, little flashes of background. If they weren't there, you probably wouldn't notice, since his story also plays out in the other narratives.
Will Kendall tells his own story in the first person. His is the easiest to follow, and the voice that I identified with the most--not his entitled white male persona (I love you, you can't leave me), but his struggles with faith (Are you real, God? If you're real, why aren't you speaking to me?). His story starts with his reimagining of the Phipps building bombing, his effort to understand. Then he backtracks to the start of his relationship to Phoebe, from when they first met and pushes forward to the present, to the aftermath of the bombing, his implication in it because of his links to the cult. Will is a Nice Guy, and his relationship with Phoebe is problematic. Even though it starts off sweet, it turns obsessive, delusional and abusive. Will is remorseful after the fact, but does that ever really change anything?
Phoebe Lin's narrative is the most difficult to read. It often starts off in the third person and meanders into the first, often flitting between present and past with little notice. I cannot tell if it is someone else telling her story, or if she has multiple personalities she shifts between (she sometimes refers to herself by her Korean name, Haejin). She's drawn to the cult for what it purports to offer: a way to cleanse her soul of guilt.
The Incendiaries is raw, offering up a fractured, misguided understanding of Christianity and faith. Will yells into the void for a God he does not believe in anymore. Phoebe performs penance for the things she cannot forgive herself for. John just wants the world to burn for its sins.
It's also the love story of two people whose religious journeys are diametrically opposed: Will's faith had led to action, but ultimately left him dry and unfulfilled whilst Phoebe hopes that her actions will lead to faith in hopes of forgiveness from her guilt. It's a relationship doomed from the start, inherently incendiary.
Note: I received a digital copy of this book from Edelweiss. I was given the book with no expectation of a positive review and the review is my own.
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
kinda similar vibes to the secret history but duller, vaguer, and written in thee most painfully generic nyt bestseller voice
the book bills itself as a meditation on obsessive devotion and character study exploring how devotion can turn to fanaticism and violence. the "obsession" the characters experience - towards each other, or towards their faith - never feels believable or interesting because the subject of their devotion - whether it's god or girls - always feels so thinly, vaguely, and generically rendered. RO Kwon attempts some fun experimental techniques with the narration style - there are layers of unreliable narrators within unreliable narrators - which is intended to reflect the inherent mysteriousness and intangibility of the human condition. But I think that Kwon doesn't understand that just making characters more mysterious doesn't make them more interesting; after a certain point I just stopped caring because it was all starting to feel so noncommittal - like she herself wasn't sure who she wanted any of these characters to be so she made them essentially no one. The book keeps orbiting around this question, "what drives obsessive devotion? What could break someone to the point of committing extreme violence?" and ultimately the only answer it has to offer is "¯\_(ツ)_/¯" which is fine if that's what she was going for, but it doesn't make for a particularly interesting or rewarding reading experience. Will especially is so boring!!! Reading from his POV is exhausting because he is simply not an interesting man with nothing to say and no observations to make that haven't been made by 1000 cardboard whiteboy protagonists speckled across the history of literary fiction.
The themes I thought were most interesting were the class commentaries and questions surrounding what it does to one's sense of self to be in a "high achiever" or member of a "high achieving" culture, whether that community be religious, ethnic, academic, professional etc., Will's fundamentalist devotion to god so seamlessly translated into fundamentalist devotion to building financial models was so fascinating but it was a theme that only existed on the margins of the book and was never given much room to develop
it was disappointing because I became interested in this novel after hearing Kwon speak and she seems like such a passionate person with a unique perspective on the world and none of this came through in the book!! this felt something that could have been written by literally anyone
the book bills itself as a meditation on obsessive devotion and character study exploring how devotion can turn to fanaticism and violence. the "obsession" the characters experience - towards each other, or towards their faith - never feels believable or interesting because the subject of their devotion - whether it's god or girls - always feels so thinly, vaguely, and generically rendered. RO Kwon attempts some fun experimental techniques with the narration style - there are layers of unreliable narrators within unreliable narrators - which is intended to reflect the inherent mysteriousness and intangibility of the human condition. But I think that Kwon doesn't understand that just making characters more mysterious doesn't make them more interesting; after a certain point I just stopped caring because it was all starting to feel so noncommittal - like she herself wasn't sure who she wanted any of these characters to be so she made them essentially no one. The book keeps orbiting around this question, "what drives obsessive devotion? What could break someone to the point of committing extreme violence?" and ultimately the only answer it has to offer is "¯\_(ツ)_/¯" which is fine if that's what she was going for, but it doesn't make for a particularly interesting or rewarding reading experience. Will especially is so boring!!! Reading from his POV is exhausting because he is simply not an interesting man with nothing to say and no observations to make that haven't been made by 1000 cardboard whiteboy protagonists speckled across the history of literary fiction.
The themes I thought were most interesting were the class commentaries and questions surrounding what it does to one's sense of self to be in a "high achiever" or member of a "high achieving" culture, whether that community be religious, ethnic, academic, professional etc., Will's fundamentalist devotion to god so seamlessly translated into fundamentalist devotion to building financial models was so fascinating but it was a theme that only existed on the margins of the book and was never given much room to develop
it was disappointing because I became interested in this novel after hearing Kwon speak and she seems like such a passionate person with a unique perspective on the world and none of this came through in the book!! this felt something that could have been written by literally anyone
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism, Death, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Death of parent
Minor: Physical abuse
I kept waiting for story to happen and it never really did. An interesting character study perhaps, but I was pretty disappointed.
2.5/5. I was drawn in by the book synopsis – cults and extremism, wrapped in a liberal arts college drama? Sign me right up. Unfortunately, the reading experience felt inexplicably hollow, like something was missing. The characters' back stories didn't provide them with adequate depth or motivation for their actions. Like, how do you make a character who goes on to carry out a bombing *boring*? Extremely disappointing because I was really looking forward to this one.
There were some great lines and beautiful description, but I think some of the plot and pathos just drowned itself in word soup. I read this book after reading the author's article about not killing your darlings, which I really liked. But I think there were too many darlings here. Too many for me, anyway.
Solid 3.5. Read this in one sitting. The style took some time getting used to, but I found myself wanting more from the story, the characters, their decisions. It read almost like a short story.
I really liked the story, but not the writing style. The bombing takes place at the end of the book, so really it's just a lot of examination of the three characters and how they got there.