R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries purports to be a novel about a college cult "with ties to North Korea," but it's really an examination of faith through relationships, religion, and cults. And while that in of itself is interesting, I was led to the book through false pretenses, and once there, the plot and characters failed to catch me.
At a private, prestigious university, Will Kendall spies Phoebe Haejin Lin dancing at a party. Her moves are magnetic, while his are awkward and rote, but the two spend the evening together and a relationship soon forms.
Will is a scholarship student from a rougher part of California, but he pretends to be from a wealthy L.A. family to fit in with the other students. When he isn't studying to ensure his continued scholarship support, he's working as a waiter at a local restaurant. Phoebe, however, is rich (though the circumstances surrounding her wealth are less than happy). She's stunning and popular, an able conversationalist, a party animal. Will is in love, and Phoebe reliant on his reliability.
As the two become closer, they reveal their secrets. Will shares his poor past, and how, as a child, he became an evangelical Christian when his mother got sick. He proselytized on corners; he spoke in tongues. But one day he waited for a sign from God, one that never came, and he knew then that God, faith, belief, was hopeless, meaningless. Phoebe recounts her childhood dream of playing the piano professionally, and her own guilt over her mother's death. Her father was a pastor, but they were never close, and she never fell into faith.
But this changes when she meets John Leal, a fellow student who walks around campus barefoot. He's half-Korean and knows her father from missionary work in the past.
John believes his life's purpose is to be a leader of disciples of God, and he has his eyes on Phoebe. When Phoebe begins to attend his weekly meetings, Will can't help but notice the drastic changes in the woman he loves. Will makes a terrible choice, and when disaster strikes, he fears Phoebe is the prime suspect.
The title of this novel made me expect something raw, something brightly glowing and igniting in the dark, and what I got was a tepid landscape seen through a fogged up lens.
Neither Will, Phoebe, or John felt like flesh-and-blood humans. Despite their given backstories, I had trouble understanding their motivations, and their emotions felt staged. There was nothing raw or incendiary in them, which made them hard to like.
Though the form of perspectives was unique (Will narrates both Phoebe and John's sections too, as an imagination of what he thought their inner dialogues and private experiences might be like), the writing as a whole felt disjointed. The metaphors especially - they didn't mesh with the surrounding writing and pulled me away from the scene. If often felt like an, "Oh! I should use a metaphor here! [insert metaphor]" kind of moment, again and again.
I'm willing to chalk my dissatisfaction with this novel up to a case of mistaken expectations and misleading advertising. The book blurb didn't capture the heart of what this story really is, which is an examination of faith, what leads someone to believe, how that belief shapes their actions, and how belief and those reasons can be utterly unfathomable even to those closest to us. That faith can bring together but also divide, that obsession, love, religion, and cults might not be so separate as we like to believe.
The New England college cult-y feel was reminiscent of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, but while that was a full-bodied picture, The Incendiares is a hasty, half-realized sketch.
5/10 📕