Title & author
The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon
Synopsis
Narrated by Will, a transfer student from Bible college to the prestigious Edwards University, The Incendiaries follows Will’s infatuation with Phoebe, an illusive student who is overwhelmed with guilt. In his eyes, we watch Phoebe’s captivation with a local cult leader grow, Kwon aptly capturing both characters’ transformations in the title of the novel. Ultimately, it is a strong and stark story of how men, society, have let women down.
Who should read this book
Fans of Looking for Alaska and The Secret History
What we’re thinking about
How men narrate our lives
Trigger warning(s)
Sexual violence, physical violence, abortion, sexism, racism
“Incendiary, noun: a person who starts fire; a person who stirs up conflict.” R.O. Kwon’s aptly named novel, The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books, 2018), immediately calls to mind chaos. Both the title and the geometrically haphazard cover point in the direction of unrest, only confirmed by the first sentence: “They’d have gathered on a rooftop in Noxhurst to watch the explosion” (Kwon, 1).
We first are introduced to Will, a transfer student from Bible college to the prestigious Edwards University. Through his eyes, we meet Phoebe, a grieving and guilty daughter, and John Leal, a religious leader. Will’s narration is continuous, interrupted only by shadows of Phoebe’s and John’s—shadows because, while they are attributed to Phoebe or John, they are records of Will’s memory and imagination.
Phoebe, as we learn through Will, watched her mother die in a car accident. She becomes illusive, unfocused, whoever the kids at her school want her to be, in order to not focus on her guilt. “I’d examined the glyphs as I might have a coded map, directions to Phoebe’s shining, inmost psyche, that visible opacity, which showed itself in allowing me to sight it hiding. Privation is lust; isolation, desire. I craved what she withheld. I always wanted to know more about how it felt, being Phoebe” (Kwon, 121). Phoebe hides, but Will’s narration implies he sees beyond this, that there is more to Phoebe than the “party girl,” even if he can’t quite grasp what’s there.
Then there’s John Leal: a former member of a combative group that rescued imprisoned individuals. When he himself is imprisoned and eventually freed (left to die), he realizes his mission to bring others to God. He returns back to the surrounding area of the school he once attended (Edwards) where students are compelled by his worship group, including Phoebe.
In Kwon’s original way, we come to know the three main characters. Will’s voice connects the three narrations, but one also can’t help read this ability as a form of power: why is it he who speaks for them? Why is he the one telling their stories?
In a Q&A with Kwon, she says “There are ways in which the novel is, I think and hope, deeply feminist” (Kwon, 221). For a book narrated by a man, whose narration prevents the only woman protagonist (who is, in many ways, the center of the story) from speaking, how can it then be deeply feminist?
Kwon’s story deals with abortion, sexual assault, and a woman growing into herself. She writes various women characters—Will’s coworkers, Liesl, other cult members—and how men, society, have let them down. And while Will at times notices, Kwon’s writing ultimately reveals him as oblivious.
Phoebe’s story is no different. It is determined largely by the men around her—specifically in the form of Will’s narration and John’s role as “God”—and this doesn’t lack purpose. We are only able to see parts of Phoebe, those parts dictated by the information Will shares and the information John draws out of her. In fact, what Will relays about Phoebe, the times he sees as tender and desirous, are all questionable—is this really what Phoebe said, or is it what Will imagined? Is it simply what he wished she had done? One can’t help but wonder if it is Will imagining as a romantic what he wishes was there (“Here’s a wish, I thought,” Phoebe, or Will, narrates. “Don’t let me go. Until Will, I drifted: he attached me to this patch of earth. He clung all night” (84)).
Kwon’s choice to shroud Phoebe’s voice in the decisions of these men reads as a metaphor for sexism and gendered expectations. “I watch the girl I love,” Will says, “a silhouette waiting upon what I haven’t thought to give” (Kwon, 99). To him, to John, and other men, perhaps Phoebe is a silhouette of a woman. But are there people that can see past Will’s narration—see him as oblivious to the sexism and violence surrounding him? Perhaps it is the readers, specifically women, that can understand Phoebe, see the trauma she has experienced, the ways in which men have failed her and other women. These people may understand what prevents her from sharing every part of her with the man she loves and her male religious leader. Maybe it is Kwon’s unique way of crafting the novel and bringing three very different characters together that gives readers the ability to understand what’s beyond the page. So in the end, it is up to us to see Phoebe’s true, full self as a reflection of our own.
“I hadn’t been allowed outside, when I was a child, without putting on sun lotion. My mother’s light, cool hands patted protective liquid on my face. She fastened a wide-brim hat beneath my chin, tying the ribbons in a firm knot, loops aligned. Such pains she’d taken, for the little I’d since become.”
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