Product Description

A massive terrorist attack on Arsenal's new stadium - a woman grieving for her husband and son - a unique, twisted powerhouse of a novel. Angry, funny, heart-rending and subversive, few first novels are as compelling as this one. From the first sentence of her open letter to Osama Bin Laden, Incendiary's unforgettable narrator won't let you go, and her cry of raw outrage at the murder of her family rapidly develops into something very unexpected. Part thriller, part satire, part memorial to a dead child, it shows us an East End woman trying every way she can to climb out of despair, and a society in the grip of fear and self-interest. It is a story in which everyone is compromised - where personal betrayals reflect national ones, and Britain's class system is a ticking bomb. Shocking but tender, brutal yet hopeful, Incendiary forces us to see what we'd rather not see, yet never fails to entertain. The writing moves from horror to humour with terrifying ease. The power of the storytelling is mesmerising. Cleave has pinned a generation down on the mat and refused to allow it up till it admits it's rotten.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151093 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Brigitte Weeks,
"(A) mesmerizing tour de force: ragged, breathless, full of raw emotion, the blackest of humor and relentless action."

Lawrence Norfolk,
‘The eloquence of Cleaves heroine is equal to the atrocity which claims her family. She is … triumphantly convincing.’

Caryn James,
"Cleave's novel is stunning in its portrayal of a city living with terror"

Customer Reviews

Sad, terrifying, funny and completely gripping
Even without the dreadful coincidence lent by its publication day and the London atrocities occurring together, Incendiary is a truly powerful book.

Using jauntily naive language from a female central character Cleaver has written a book that is both laugh-out-loud funny, deeply unsettling and terribly sad. The book takes the form of a long letter to Osama Bin Laden written by a woman whose "chaps" -- her policeman husband and four year old son -- were incinerated in a terrorist attack on a London football stadium. The letter recounts her experiences after the deaths and her descent into the madness brought about by her grief. Without her chaps she has no real reason to live -- and certainly no reason to remain sane in a world going steadily mad all by itself.

The terrifying, sad story is woven around with a descant of humour, some sharp one-liners, bitingly accurate perceptions and gripping story-telling. Using the device of an uneducated but very intelligent woman as his narrator allows Cleave to write some wonderful descriptions of people that use simile and metaphor to great effect, producing really great writing that delights with its accuracy and perceptiveness. Very, very clever; very very good.

Mesmerising
Incendiary is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. Daring, provocative and sometimes heartbreaking, Cleave's narrator had me gripped from beginning to end. Cleverly told and often uproariously funny, this multi-layered story reveals itself as an impassioned denouncement of terrorism, and a warning that our emotional responses to terrorism risk destroying our own way of life. Like the issue of terrorism itself, this is a complex and divisive book, and people will either love it or hate it. Some people won't get it at all. Read it, and decide for yourself. You won't be wasting your time. I was up till the small hours reading Incendiary - it's that compelling.

Disappointing and a little confused
Incendiary for me was a bit of a mixed bag. I read it thinking it was going to be a gripping thriller based around a fictional terror attack on London (bizarrely originally due for release on 7th July 2005). It turned out to be part thriller, part Kitchen Sink Drama and part Chick-Lit. The novel's main premise is a pretty bold concept - a woman whose son and husband are killed by an al-Qaeda bomb writes a letter to Osama Bin Laden to tell him what the effect of his actions has been. It feels like if it had been written by a more experienced writer it could have worked, but it doesn't quite in this instance. Seeing as this is Cleave's first novel it may be that his future work is sharper. The novel has good elements - a dark sense of humour and vivid descriptions of a London torn apart and paranoid following an atrocity. Unfortunately the good elements are let down by the soap-opera characters and a pervading feeling that Incendiary can't quite make up its mind what it is.