Chris Cleave's "Incendiary"


In Chris Cleave's debut novel the main protagonist loses both her husband and her son in an Islamist terror attack. In the letters she then writes to Osama bin Laden, she defies the prophet of fundamentalist terror. Claudia Kramatschek has read the book

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In "Incendiary", Chris Cleave spares his readers little – neither unappetizing details nor the obscene language of his modern-day Jeanne D'Arc | "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 Dexy's 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?"

The author of this personal letter to Osama bin Laden is the unnamed narrator of Chris Cleave's first novel. She's a rather quick-witted woman living in East End London, a working-class district permeated by the "smell of chip fat."

She writes rambling letters to the prophet of fundamentalist terror hoping to finally unburden her soul after the events of last May 1, when Osama, or one of his many envoys, set off a bomb at Arsenal Stadium during the team's title match against Chelsea – a game attended by her husband and four-year-old son.

And only the day before, her husband had come to the long deliberated decision of quitting his dangerous job with the bomb squad to live in peace and quiet with his wife and child.

Poking fun at sensitive wounds

The reader take warning – Cleave makes use of black humor and an often politically incorrect satirical take on real events to poke at the sensitive wounds left in the West after the historically momentous events of 9/11. Since this date, the narrator also finds herself in a peculiar state of mind.

Whenever confronted with a panic attack, she feels the urgent need to sleep with a man – which turns out to be just about every day. She is engaged in such a rendezvous when she is bewildered by the sight of the stadium explosion on television. Only the man behind her is not her husband, but rather a rich fop in an Armani suit. Nonetheless, from this second on her world is no longer the same.

"The camera was shaking. The sound cut out. Everything went very quiet. Jasper Black stopped moving inside me. Oh fuck he said oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. One I said. Two three four. … The fog bank faded into a big dirty ball of smoke and orange flame boiling up where the East Stand used to be. The keeper was flat on his face he wasn't moving. The flames rolled over him. Van Persie was still looking where his shot had gone. He followed the ball with his eyes. The ball flew back towards him and bounced right beside him and so did a man's arm."

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Cleave doesn't shy away from any means at his disposal – slapstick and humor, kitsch and caricature | As might be expected, Cleave spares his readers little – neither unappetizing details nor the obscene language of his modern-day Jeanne D'Arc, who embodies the voice of her class and surroundings. Yet, this is exactly the stylistic principle of the novel – reality bites. ... This is where Cleave manages to capture the mental madness that creeps into a society pervaded by generalized suspicion.

And he doesn't shy away from any means at his disposal – slapstick and humor, kitsch and caricature – like when Prince William pays a visit to the survivors in the hospital and is splattered by the vomit of the narrator, who has just been informed that only her son's toy stuffed rabbit has survived the attack, although left somewhat charred.

All Muslims placed under supervision

Behind the novel's black humor, however, lurks the naked truth – London is being transformed into a high security fortress. All Muslims present a security risk and are therefore to be placed under supervision. "It's war," says Terence Butcher, of course, a superintendent at Scotland Yard. It is he to whom the narrator turns to in her desperation, as he was her husband's superior and, long ago, was also one of her lovers.

Yet, in this war, the West is all but ready to discard its basic principles, as it gradually becomes clear to Cleave's anti-heroine. Butcher discloses to her in a weak moment that the terrorist attack could have been prevented, but that this would have jeopardized security investigations.

"This is going to be so hard for you to hear, he said. If we'd acted to stop May Day then the terrorists would have known something was up. They'd have changed everything. All their people. All their places. Everything. We'd have lost all insight into what they were planning. And we couldn't let that happen. The stakes are too high."

Who is really mad – them or us?

This is cold cynicism and politics unwilling to stop at anything, not even the deaths of innocent bystanders, especially second-class bystanders, as Cleave's narrator, an uncompromising champion of dignity and justice, indignantly remarks. Naturally, Cleave is playing with political conspiracy theories, such as those still making the rounds about the attack on the World Trade Center. The message, however, is clear. Under such conditions one has to ask who is really mad – them or us?

At the end of his novel, Cleave offers his readers with an absurd and allegorical showdown, with all the ingredients of the tasteless scenario that reality has long since provided – media hacks, making a fortune from terror, an assumed terrorist, shot by the police, and an endearing and worldly-wise heroine, who mutates into a lunatic, because she suspects that there is only one person who can save her world – Osama bin Laden.

"Listen to that noise Osama it is time for you to stop blowing the world apart. Come to me Osama. Come to me and we will blow the world back together WITH INCREDIBLE NOISE AND FURY."

It certainly may not be to everyone's taste, but, furious and often hitting the mark, this is a novel worth reading.

Claudia Kramatschek

© Qantara.de 2006

Translated from the German by John Bergeron


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