Reviews of Incendiary by Chris Cleave

Media Reviews

The Guardian Writing from a non-literary perspective enables Cleave consistently to find words in situations for which no words may commonly be found... how can one fail to be impressed and moved by passages that seem precisely to sum up the national mood following the July 7 attacks?

Sunday Telegraph - Lawrence Norfolk Cleave has both courted "contemporary relevance" and, following the London bombs, has had such relevance thrust upon him. But if Incendiary, or any book, is to survive such relevance, to walk unscathed, as it were, from the scene of the disaster, it is for the traditional reason that a book has more to say than a bomb. The eloquence of Cleave's heroine is equal to the atrocity which claims her family. She is by turns funny, sad, flawed, sympathetic, both damaged and indomitable, and triumphantly convincing.

The Economist Fiction can be a highly effective way of depicting terror. Not because terror is a better subject than others for novels, though today it has a certain topicality, but because fine writing - and "Incendiary" is a very fine example - is such an eloquent human instrument.

The Observer - Rachel Cooke When, the day after the tube attacks, Waterstone's pulled its advertising for Incendiary, a novel by Chris Cleave about the havoc wreaked by suicide bombers during a football match at Arsenal's stadium. I thought: good. Cleave's prescience, combined with the cover of his book, emblazoned with plumes of smoke curling above London's skyline, seemed more than 'insensitive'. It felt like an insult.

The Observer - Hephzibah Anderson You could say that the timing of Incendiary (its publication date was 7/7) was a macabre confluence of fact and fiction, had not its packaging so deliberately set out to exploit a threat that was ever real. Marketing is marketing, of course, and this would matter less were the book any good. As it is, it reads like the worst kind of 'issues and tissues' teen fiction, both glib and sentimental.

The Times Literary Supplement - Mike Brett Because there are no characters worth caring about, we fail to identify the world of the novel as our own.

Kirkus Reviews Like David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, Cleave's provocative debut will make readers a little uneasy-and that's okay.

Library Journal Graphic depictions of violence and gore accompany humorous reflections on life and class differences-an odd combination that makes for strangely compelling reading.

Publishers Weekly The whole is nicely done, as the protagonist's headlong sentences mimic intelligent illiteracy with accuracy, and her despairingly acidic responses to events-and media versions of them-ring true. But the working-class London slang permeates the book to a distracting degree.

Reader Reviews

Kristi Youngs
Hated this book!
I hated this book and it made me mad. The male author tried to write in a female point-of-view but, women do not think about sex as much as men do. This book was so offensive on so many levels and all of the characters were awful. Don't waste your...   Read More

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