Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4/5
About The Book
R.O. Kwon’s first novel, The Incendiaries, is published by Riverhead (U.S.) and forthcoming from Virago (U.K.) in September 2018. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vice, BuzzFeed, Time, Noon, Electric Literature, Playboy, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. She has received awards and fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Omi International, and the Norman Mailer Writers’ Colony. Born in South Korea, she’s mostly lived in the United States.
My Thoughts
This is a book of love, lose and faith.
The Incendiaries in one of those books that touches so many important themes, that before writing the review I had to make a list of all the things I wanted to say about this story; different, thoughtful and bittersweet, The Incendiaries will start a little fire in your life, maybe making you to change the way you live, think or act, or simply being on your mind for a long time.
Will, Phoebe and John Leal will cross paths in a moment in history, making their lives to change forever, and doing some irreparable damage to the world. But the most important question you should ask after reading this book is, how much damage can a person inflict to another by simply playing with their mind?
I am not a religious person, I don't believe in any God or heaven of any type, but I can respect the people who need to believe that there's something more powerful than ourselves to be redeemed for their own faults or the things that are part of our destiny. What I don't like is the people that uses this trust to manipulate other people, I always thought that cults were dangerous, and this story has given me the reason. Cult had been always a dangerous and scary word for me, because the people in it are normal people that in a dangerous moment in their life had been abducted by them, and I am sure you can't deny me that everyone has their weak moments. Phoebe has a lot of regret in her life, pain and guilt, I am not sure what she is really searching, but she find relief the Jejah (the religious cult); maybe because she thinks they don't judge her? I don't know, people in a cult always have a secret meaning, and of course this cult is not different.
Will is quite obsessed with Phoebe, I think loving her is too light for the deepest feelings he has. He wants to become someone different after loosing her beliefs in religion, that has marked him, and will maybe make Phoebe see in different eyes.
And John Leal, the leader of the cult, with his own fearss and pains, has a secret plan prepared for the moment she will meet Phoebe...
This is a book with three main characters in which their stories mix up so good that is only one voice that we read and feel, their stories will be connected, evolved and written with delicacy and softness that you won't want to end.
Ready for The Incendiaries?
About The Author
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.
Labels: 2018, Blog Tour, Book, Fiction, Review, Virago
R.O. Kwon’s first novel, The Incendiaries, is published by Riverhead (U.S.) and forthcoming from Virago (U.K.) in September 2018. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vice, BuzzFeed, Time, Noon, Electric Literature, Playboy, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. She has received awards and fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Omi International, and the Norman Mailer Writers’ Colony. Born in South Korea, she’s mostly lived in the United States.
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.