The narrative jumps around, like memory does the emphasis changes as Will’s grief stirs him to recount different parts of the months leading up to the climactic events he’s trying to reckon with.

China stood prismatic on the opposite side.” Filaments glittered, straining with his weight. His nerves stretched, a net to span the width of ice dividing him from the rest of his life. If they didn’t shoot him, they’d watch him plunge through ice, and drown. John Leal is made to cross a frozen river that would lead him to China: “Behind him, a guard laughed. He walks barefoot, claims that God speaks to him and tells stories about having been kidnapped by North Korean soldiers and brought to a gulag where he worked and watched death and misery surround him, until he was let go for no apparent reason. John Leal - and he is, like Jim Jones or Charles Manson, always addressed thus, though it isn’t clear whether Leal is his surname, middle name, or an adopted moniker - is a mystery of a man. Others labeled “John Leal” describe what little Will knows about this man who started Jejah, the cult Phoebe joins. Sections marked “Phoebe” detail Will’s conjectures about her life mixed with bits of what might be her own account, copied from a notebook he finds. It makes sense - he’s trying to put a narrative together in order to understand the events that have occurred to and around him. “She would sit apart from this reveling group,” he hypothesizes. “They’d have gathered on a rooftop,” he assumes. Additionally, the novel’s narration is complicated, compromised and unreliable.įrom the very first page, Will tells us that he is speculating. But there is more to it than that, because when faith, obsession and grief become bedfellows, the differences between them blur. He realizes that the group is not just a bunch of bible thumping zealots but a cult led by its demanding leader. He watches her fall in with a group of nominal Christians whose version of faith is so intense that shegives herself to it body and soul.

On its surface, “The Incendiaries” has a simple plot. And this slim, intense novel is the rare book that lives up to its pre-publication hype. Certain literary circles have been buzzing about R.O.

The incendiaries by ro kwon