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Incendiary - Chris Cleave
by brokenangel 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. Read the complete review |
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Fourth Realm 1: The Traveller - John Twelve Hawks
by jacketpotato This is a story set in the modern society we all live in but are oblivious to. In our society, we take for granted the world of technology and surveillance, but in true classic big brother style, who watches the watchers and to compound this, what is the true value of this data, is there any privacy? The Traveller was ... recommended to me by a friend who found the concept of the story interestingly scary. The three main groups in this novel are; the Travellers, people with the ability to travel to another realm, Tabula, a group of people seeking out the Travellers and Harlequins, those who defend the Travellers from the Tabula. The story continues about how the Tabula are on the hunt for a pair of Travellers by using their might. The Tabula have access to all the information anywhere, ever in the data collected from computers, phones, CCTV and so on. The Harlequins, namely Maya, then attempts to protect the Travellers, the Corrigan brothers from the bad guys whose motives are not yet entirely clear... The premise of this story is great; it definitely had me wanting to find out the true story lying underneath what could easily be happening in world we live in. Now the bad. The book is poorly written with characters one can never really believe in. There are attempts by the author to string multiple scenes concurrently by giving snippets, but rather than building tension, it creates a discordant feel which makes it difficult to read for prolonged periods of time. So it is a shame that this potentially great storyline is encapsulated by a poorly written book. Read the complete review |
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Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
by raakhee123 It makes you think about how do you really know someone when you marry them? Nick and Amy met fell in love but one day she disappears on their fifth wedding anniversary. Not knowing what has happened to his wife Nick is beside himself with worry. People, including the police point fingers at him and he is the prime suspect in his wife's ... disappearance. As the plot unfolds you start seeing a relationship of mistrust and lies. it makes you wonder how a marriage could even survive something like this. I won't want to spoil the ending for anyone as its a very gripping story and I read this book in a few days, its a real page turner and it kept me hooked. I heard that this is going to be made into a film so I will be watching it and I hope its as successful as the book is. Read the complete review |
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