Staff Pick
You really have to give some giant props to a novel that starts out, "Dear Osama." What follows is a searing portrait of a woman riven by grief, pain, guilt, and horror at the (particularly gruesome) death of her husband and child due to a terrorist attack. While Cleave sure knows how to plumb the depths of current events, he also creates characters who are flawed, duplicitous, and stupid: clearly all too real. Yet, they struggle through their crises with tender underbellies, which mark them as vulnerable and make their morally complicated stories beautiful. Bravo! Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
In an emotionally raw voice alive with grief, compassion, and startling humor, a woman mourns the loss of her husband and son at the hands of one of history’s most notorious criminals. And in appealing to their executioner, she reveals the desperate sadness of a broken heart and a working-class life blown apart.
Review
"A haunting work of art." Newsweek
Review
"A mesmerizing tour de force." Washington Post
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"Cleave has achieved something rare....[The narrator] will break your heart and remind you how, in the face of the uncontrollable and the inexplicable, humor can allow one to survive." San Francisco Chronicle
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"An audacious, provocative voice....[Cleave] has a clear and disturbing vision of the psychological effects of an attack on a city population." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"In Cleave's gripping story...[his] portrayal of a woman unraveling in the face of overwhelming grief is both compelling and haunting…‘Incendiary reminds us that in the face of uncontrollable and unimaginable tragedy, humor and words can provide comfort, but ultimately each of us must search deep within ourselves for the resilience to survive…' The heroine's plea to Bin Laden is at once filled with despair, rage, and acerbic wit… it is about more than just one mother's loss. It's also a subtle political commentary on the loss of principles, loss of respect, loss of freedoms, and loss of innocence that can surface in a city or nation after a terrorist attack. Like the blast itself, the emotions consume all those in its path…Incendiary suggests that even amid the rubble of a terrorist attack, we can gain a glimpse of hope for a better future, stay open to hidden gifts in one's life, and perhaps even discover that we are capable of forgiveness of our own fragility and carelessness as well as that of others." Boston Globe
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"Fiction can be a highly effective way of depicting terror...because fine writing — and Incendiary is a very fine example — is such an eloquent human instrument." The Economist
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"Sensitive, artful, and deft....Cleave's Orwellian look at the way we live is hyper-realistic, his narrator true to the point where one can almost hear her ragged breathing, smell the gin and tears on her breath....A near-perfect debut that will give the reader nightmares that may seem far too real on waking." The Sun (Baltimore)
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"Cleave...has a phenomenal talent for melodrama, a dishy, vicious sense of humor, and a sprinter's force as a writer." New York Observer
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"The eloquence of Cleave's heroine is equal to the atrocity that claims her family. She is by turns funny, sad, flawed, sympathetic, both damaged and indomitable, and triumphantly convincing....The unnamed 'I' of Incendiary is a true survivor." The Sunday Telegraph (London)
Synopsis
An emotionally charged open letter to Osama bin Laden about a London bomb plot,
Incendiary gained notoriety for the macabre coincidence of its UK publication on 7th July 2005, the day of the London terrorist bombings.
Incendiary won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize, won the United States Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction award 2005 and won the Prix Spécial du Jury at the French Prix des Lecteurs 2007.
Incendiary is an international bestseller, published in 20 countries.
Synopsis
From the author of Little Bee comes a tragicomic novel in the form of an open letter to Osama Bin Laden from a young London woman whose husband and son are killed in a terrorist attack on a soccer stadium.
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About the Author
Chris Cleave is the author of Incendiary and Little Bee, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize for Best Novel. He lives with his wife and three children in Kingston-upon-Thames, England. Visit www.chriscleave.com.