I must admit I have a bit of a crush on Chris Cleave; his novels seem so immediate and at times powerful. One can sense the humanity in them. I read “Little Bee” (2009) last summer and then his first novel “Incendiary” (2005) just recently. Both are dark, sad and disturbing tales, yet the characters and situations are quite a rush.
“Incendiary,” which is about a terrorist attack in London, came out right before London was hit by terrorist attacks in July 2005. Subsequently, the novel was pulled from some shelves and buried temporarily. Apparently Cleave had written it in response to the train bombings in Madrid in 2004 and the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It was written six years before Osama bin Laden was found and killed, so reading it now is a bit like looking back.
“Incendiary” isn’t an easy novel to swallow (Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times thought it in poor taste); it’s narrated by a working-class mother writing to Osama bin Laden, as if conversationally: Osama this and Osama that, which might drive you a bit nuts. At times, it’s laced with biting humor: “I don’t know if you’ve ever walked with a crutch through the gangs of kids down Bethnal Green Road on your way from the tube … Osama. I should hope so. I mean we’re the kind of people you’re bombing so I would of hoped you’d chosen us personally.”
The mother is shattered after her husband and son are killed in a terrorist bombing, which she witnesses, to make things worse, on TV while messing around with another man. She becomes suicidal and barely functional, eventually finding solace in a police superintendent, that is, until he tells her something about the bombing, which is truly haunting and leads to her undoing.
Not to give it all way — I found myself caught up with the mother/protagonist and the dire circumstances after such a terrorist attack. “Incendiary” rings true about living in the aftermath with bomb scares and fear, curfews and grief, panic and pandemonium. The psychological effects of terrorism are raw and chilling in this very potent debut novel.
