Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Incendiary, by Chris Cleave


This novel (by the same author that wrote Little Bee, which I loved) was rather riveting. I have never read a book quite like this. It is written from the perspective of a female narrator who has lost her husband and son to a terrorist bombing organized by Osama bin Laden, and she is writing the entire account directly to "Osama," as she casually calls him. She writes without censorship (and often without punctuation), her goal being to force Osama to get to know the boy and man he killed. She believes that if he had known them, he wouldn't have killed this crowd of bystanders at a soccer game. 

Although a bit of the beginning talks about the narrator's life before the bombing, more of the book revolves around what life was like for her afterward, including the relationship she has developed with another man and, oddly enough, with his girlfriend as well. The ending was rather far-fetched for me...just a little bit crazy...but overall, I was glad to have read Incendiary

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