The Incendiaries: A Novel Hardcover – July 31, 2018
by R. O. Kwon (Author)
"In dazzlingly acrobatic prose, R. O. Kwon explores the lines between faith and fanaticism, passion and violence, the rational and the unknowable." --Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere
A powerful, darkly glittering novel about violence, love, faith, and loss, as a young Korean American woman at an elite American university is drawn into acts of domestic terrorism by a cult tied to North Korea.
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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"If you only read one book this summer, make it this complex and searing debut novel by R.O. Kwon." —Southern Living
"One of those slim novels that contains multitudes, R.O. Kwon’s debut novel shows how unreliable we are as narrators when we’re trying to invent — and reinvent — ourselves." —Vulture
"Written in dazzling, spare prose... Kwon’s novel expertly addresses questions of faith and identity while managing to be formally inventive in its construction... In this intriguing cult story, Kwon thoroughly explores her characters’ motivations, making for an urgent and disarming debut." —Publishers Weekly
“The Incendiaries is a God-haunted, willful, strange book written with a kind of savage elegance. I've said it before, but now I'll shout it from the rooftops: R. O. Kwon is the real deal.”
—Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies and Florida
“Every explosive requires a fuse. That’s R. O. Kwon’s novel, a straight, slow-burning fuse. To read her novel is to follow an inexorable flame coming closer and closer to the object it will detonate—the characters, the crime, the story, and, ultimately, the reader.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees
“The Incendiaries probes the seductive and dangerous places to which we drift when loss unmoors us. In dazzlingly acrobatic prose, R. O. Kwon explores the lines between faith and fanaticism, passion and violence, the rational and the unknowable.”
—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You
“A swift, sensual novel about the unraveling of a collegiate relationship and its aftermath. Kwon writes gracefully about the spiritual insecurities of millennials.”
—Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs
"This debut novel is absolutely electric, something new in the firmament. Everyone should read this book."
—Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
“A classic love triangle between two tormented college students and God. The Incendiaries brings us, page by page, from quiet reckonings with shame and intimacy to a violent, grand tragedy. In a conflagration of lyrical prose, R. O. Kwon skillfully evokes the inherent extremism of young love."
—Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens
“An impressive, assured debut about the hope for personal and political revolution and all the unexpected ways it flickers out. Kwon has vital things to say about the fraught times we live in.”
—Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation
“A profound, intricate exploration of how grief and lost faith and the vulnerable storm of youth can drive people to irrevocable extremes, told with a taut intensity that kept me up all night. R.O. Kwon is a thrilling writer, and her splendid debut is unsettled, irresistible company.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me
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About the Author
R. O. Kwon is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing is published or forthcoming in The Guardian, Vice, Buzzfeed, Time, Noon, Electric Literature, Playboy, and elsewhere.
She has received awards from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Omi International, the Steinbeck Center, and the Norman Mailer Writers' Colony.
Born in South Korea, she has lived most of her life in the United States.
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Product details
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Books (July 31, 2018)
Language: English
Follow
Biography
R. O. Kwon is the author of the novel The Incendiaries (July 2018), and is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing is published in The Guardian, Vice, BuzzFeed, Time, Noon, Electric Literature, Playboy, and elsewhere. She has received awards from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Omi International, the Steinbeck Center, and the Norman Mailer Writers' Colony. Born in South Korea, she has lived most of her life in the United States. She can be found at http://ro-kwon.com.
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The Incendiaries
R.O. Kwon. Riverhead, $26 (224p) ISBN 978-0-7352-1389-0
Written in dazzling, spare prose, Kwon’s debut tells the fractured story of three young people looking for something to believe in while attending the prestigious Edwards University. There’s Will Kendall, a one-time “kid evangelist” who transferred from a Bible college after losing his faith in God. He soon meets—and falls in love with—Phoebe Lin, a Korean-American pianist wrestling with the death of her mother in an accident for which she blames herself. And then there’s John Leal, a charismatic cult leader and former Edwards student who claims to have been held captive in North Korea; he offers Phoebe the supposedly noble cause she craves. Will watches in horror as Phoebe joins Leal’s so-called Jejah, a circle of quasi-religious radicals that soon sinks into right-wing terrorism targeting abortion clinics. Phoebe disappears following a fatal accident involving members of her group, leaving Will to untangle Leal’s web of deceit and find out what happened to Phoebe. Kwon’s novel expertly addresses questions of faith and identity while managing to be formally inventive in its construction (the stream-of-consciousness style, complete with leaps between characters, amplifies the subject matter). In this intriguing cult story, Kwon thoroughly explores her characters’ motivations, making for an urgent and disarming debut. (July)
Correction: this review originally misspelled a character's name
-
THE INCENDIARIES
by R.O. Kwon
KIRKUS REVIEW
A first-time novelist explores identity, deception, and obsession.
“In the estival heat, he set his back against the cold stone of a tomb. He plucked a honeysuckle stalk sprouting from what had once been men; he sipped its bit of juice. In time, lying in the dirt, he, too, might nourish future pilgrims. If he had one petition for himself, it was this: that he be made useful.” How one reacts to this passage is almost certainly an indicator of how one will react to this novel as a whole. Readers who delight in encountering seldom-used words and precise depictions of physical and mental landscapes are likely to love Kwon’s writerly style.
-----------
Product details
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Books (July 31, 2018)
Language: English
Follow
Biography
R. O. Kwon is the author of the novel The Incendiaries (July 2018), and is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing is published in The Guardian, Vice, BuzzFeed, Time, Noon, Electric Literature, Playboy, and elsewhere. She has received awards from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Omi International, the Steinbeck Center, and the Norman Mailer Writers' Colony. Born in South Korea, she has lived most of her life in the United States. She can be found at http://ro-kwon.com.
------------------
The Incendiaries
R.O. Kwon. Riverhead, $26 (224p) ISBN 978-0-7352-1389-0
Written in dazzling, spare prose, Kwon’s debut tells the fractured story of three young people looking for something to believe in while attending the prestigious Edwards University. There’s Will Kendall, a one-time “kid evangelist” who transferred from a Bible college after losing his faith in God. He soon meets—and falls in love with—Phoebe Lin, a Korean-American pianist wrestling with the death of her mother in an accident for which she blames herself. And then there’s John Leal, a charismatic cult leader and former Edwards student who claims to have been held captive in North Korea; he offers Phoebe the supposedly noble cause she craves. Will watches in horror as Phoebe joins Leal’s so-called Jejah, a circle of quasi-religious radicals that soon sinks into right-wing terrorism targeting abortion clinics. Phoebe disappears following a fatal accident involving members of her group, leaving Will to untangle Leal’s web of deceit and find out what happened to Phoebe. Kwon’s novel expertly addresses questions of faith and identity while managing to be formally inventive in its construction (the stream-of-consciousness style, complete with leaps between characters, amplifies the subject matter). In this intriguing cult story, Kwon thoroughly explores her characters’ motivations, making for an urgent and disarming debut. (July)
Correction: this review originally misspelled a character's name
-
THE INCENDIARIES
by R.O. Kwon
KIRKUS REVIEW
A first-time novelist explores identity, deception, and obsession.
“In the estival heat, he set his back against the cold stone of a tomb. He plucked a honeysuckle stalk sprouting from what had once been men; he sipped its bit of juice. In time, lying in the dirt, he, too, might nourish future pilgrims. If he had one petition for himself, it was this: that he be made useful.” How one reacts to this passage is almost certainly an indicator of how one will react to this novel as a whole. Readers who delight in encountering seldom-used words and precise depictions of physical and mental landscapes are likely to love Kwon’s writerly style.
Her book is shot through with carefully limned descriptions and unexpected language—“orphic,” “sacerdotal,” “shibboleths,” “harlequin.” Readers who are interested in plot and character, however, may well be less satisfied despite the fact that the basic elements of a gripping story are present. Will Kendall is a poor kid and a lapsed evangelical. When he arrives at Edwards University, he invents a preppy persona to hide the fact that he’s waiting tables to support himself and his mother. Phoebe Lin was a child prodigy, the product of her own gifts and her Korean immigrant mother’s aspirations for her. Phoebe’s decision to quit the piano and her mother’s death leave her unmoored when she arrives at Edwards.
And then there’s John Leal, a charismatic Edwards dropout who has become a cult leader. It’s clear from the beginning that these three characters are moving toward cataclysm, but….The narrative is so slow and so superficial that the climax is anticlimactic. The biggest problem is that Will is both the dominant voice and the least interesting character, which diminishes the reader’s ability to understand Phoebe and John. This does make some thematic sense, in that Kwon is clearly interested in performative selfhood and the inability of truly understanding another person, but….This leaves the reader with an outsider’s perspective.
Aesthetically pleasing but narratively underwhelming.
Aesthetically pleasing but narratively underwhelming.
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