INCENDIARY (Chris Cleave) - April 8/07

Written entirely in the first person by a protagonist whose grasp on the English language leaves something to be desired, Incendiary is a fantastic - albeit thoroughly bleak - novel revolving around the exploits of a young mother whose bomb-squad husband and young son are blown up in a terrorist attack. Cleave does a fantastic job of peppering the proceedings with extraordinarily vivid set-pieces - including the initial attack, a fake attack that results in a panic later, etc - and it's certainly easy enough to overlook the poor grammar. But it's hard not to wish that the central character would've eventually gotten better; the book ends with her still seeing visions of her young son and awaiting her arrest (she almost killed the doppelganger that was meant to come out with the truth). Oh, and that twist that "THEY KNEW" is pretty fantastic. This should hopefully make for an amazing movie... **** out of ****