by R.O. Kwon
Synopsis:
"In dazzlingly acrobatic prose, R. O. Kwon explores the lines between faith and fanaticism, passion and violence, the rational and the unknowable." —Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere.
A shocking novel of violence, love, faith, and loss, as a young woman at an elite American university is drawn into acts of domestic terrorism by a cult tied to North Korea.
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Time, Parade, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, PBS, Vulture, Buzzfeed, BookRiot, PopSugar, Refinery29, Bustle, The Rumpus, Paste, and BBC.
Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet their first month at prestigious Edwards University. Phoebe is a glamorous girl who doesn't tell anyone she blames herself for her mother's recent death. Will is a misfit scholarship boy who transfers to Edwards from Bible college, waiting tables to get by. What he knows for sure is that he loves Phoebe.
Grieving and guilt-ridden, Phoebe is increasingly drawn into a religious group--a secretive extremist cult--founded by a charismatic former student, John Leal. He has an enigmatic past that involves North Korea and Phoebe's Korean American family. Meanwhile, Will struggles to confront the fundamentalism he's tried to escape, and the obsession consuming the one he loves. When the group bombs several buildings in the name of faith, killing five people, Phoebe disappears. Will devotes himself to finding her, tilting into obsession himself, seeking answers to what happened to Phoebe and if she could have been responsible for this violent act.
The Incendiaries is a fractured love story and a brilliant examination of the minds of extremist terrorists, and of what can happen to people who lose what they love most. who lose what they love most.
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication date: July 31st 2018
Source/Format: eARC/Netgalley
Purchase links: Amazon | iBooks | Indiebound | Book Depository
My Rating: ★★★☆☆
My Thoughts:
“The Incendiaries” opens with a chapter in the point of view of Will, an ex-Bible student fresh from apostasy,trying to place Phoebe, the girl she fell in love with, in the aftermaths of a terrorist act by a cult. It is followed by a chapter of an origin story of the cult leader, John Leal. Kidnapped and imprisoned in North Korea, his so-called moment of enlightenment is just plain unsettling: “Some people needed leading. In or out of the gulag, they craved faith. But think if the tyrant had been as upright as his disciples trusted him to be. The heights he’d have achieved, if he loved them.” Then the next chapter jumps to John Leal’s would-be disciple, Phoebe, who is giving her first group confession in the cult circle.
The chapters are brief and follow each other in no distinct timeline. Phoebe’s chapters are not directly in her narration but more like Will’s memory fragments of her as a college party girl seduced into a cult. John Leal’s chapters increasingly becomes sermon-like bursts. His declaration that “faith is not a gift” but a “...hard-won reward, battle spoils he wrested from the heaped debris.”, gives the reader a peek to the psyche of the cult that perpetrates violence in the name of God. The points of view of both Phoebe and John Leal have a measured distance from the reader. The reader is most intimate with Will as the reader follows the story through him. He is obsessed with Phoebe, thereby the reader becomes obsessed with her: “Privation is a lust; isolation, desire. I craved what she withheld. I always wanted to know more about how it felt, being Phoebe.”
There is an undercurrent of love triangle among the three central characters. Will is in love with Phoebe, Phoebe in turn is smitten by John Leal’s assured manner. As a former Christian missionary, Will is confident that he knows the inner workings of faith peddling. He plunges into the cult with Phoebe in the high hopes of exposing John Leal for the charlatan that he is. “The girl I loved was in a cult – and that’s what it is, I thought, a cult. It was a problem, but I'd solve it, because I was intelligent." Phoebe’s seduction to the cult is seen mostly through Will’s male gaze. As a reader, I felt robbed of her emotions and it is as if Will objectified her as a prize to be won over. Will’s arrogance slowly spiral into desperation as John Leal’s grip on Phoebe proved to be a force to reckon with. Like in this scene with shocking and brilliant undertones of cuckolding, Will watched in utter revulsion when Phoebe allowed John to raid her bag: “He dipped his fingers into the bag’s opal slit. The bright satin lining showed. I’d have liked to stop him, but she let it happen.”
“The Incendiaries” is a book that both impressed and perplexed me. I appreciate the lyrical quality of it’s prose and it’s rich imagery. I finished the book in one sitting which is a great testament to how compelling the book is. But all in all, the style is too cerebral and complex for my taste. There are so many blankspaces that I needed to fill and figure out — like placing the scenes in a timeline with chapters without date stamps and not arranged chronologically. Up until the end, Phoebe remained a teasing mystery. I’m pretty sure there are metaphors in the book that I did not get or catch. Did the characters feel not human because they are mere embodiment of intangible things like loss, fanaticism and obsession? This begs a re-read and a re-examination but I’d rather pick up the next book on my TBR than to overthink a book that clearly wants to remain under the cloak of ambiguity.
Diversity Watch:
Phoebe Lin is born to Korean parents. She and her mother immigrated to America when she was young. John Leal is half-Korean. |  | |
I'd love to hear from you!
Have you read this book yet? If yes, what are your thoughts about it? Are you a fan of books that leave spaces open for the reader's own interpretation? Or books that make you work for the details? Tell me in the comments. :)
Have you read this book yet? If yes, what are your thoughts about it? Are you a fan of books that leave spaces open for the reader's own interpretation? Or books that make you work for the details? Tell me in the comments. :)
