Incendiary, Chris Cleave

Dear Osama they want you dead or alive so the terror will stop. Well I wouldn't know about that I mean rock'n'roll didn't stop when Elvis died on the khazi it just got worse. Next thing you know there was Sonny & Cher and Dexys Midnight Runners. I'll come to them later. My point is it's easier to start these things than to finish them. I suppose you thought of that did you?

Incendiary is Chris Cleave's other book, which I once again received from Simon & Schuster. Though the premise of this one sounded less interesting, I might say that this was one was in some ways my favorite, at least in terms of the writing. In Incendiary, a British lower-class women mourns and recalls the death of her son and her husband at a soccer match which was bombed by Osama bin Laden.

Incendiary was really moving, made more so by the way that the woman (who is never named) talks or rather narrates, with no commas. It put a face and name to those nameless, faceless people who you hear about dying in bombings. There actually are real people there, with other real people who care about them. Incendiary was quite gripping, and once again, it had a great and simple title: incendiary is a type of bomb, one of the types used on London. Also, the admission that the policeman made at the end to the woman was shocking. Just shocking. It really highlighted the way that government doesn't care about the people at all, just politics. Yes, I know I sound like Ron Paul here but in this case it's true...I won't give it away, but it basically changed the whole consequence of the incident. The other interesting thing about this one is that I believe at the time it came out there was a bombing incident in London.

Read Incendiary:

• if you like Chris Cleave
• if you are looking for a searing, heart-wrenching emotional novel

237 pages, 4.75 stars.