When First Love Is as Lethal as Religious

Extremism.
July 24, 2018 – The New York Times.

Fiction

Author: R.O. KwonSmeeta Mahanti

THE INCENDIARIES
By R.O. Kwon
224 pp. Riverhead Books. US$26.

“Think of charm as a verb, not a trait,” Gavin de Becker writes in his 1997
best seller, “The Gift of Fear,” in a chapter on predators. Charm is an ability,
not a passive feature, he writes, and it almost always has a motive.

In R. O. Kwon’s radiant debut novel (bright), “The Incendiaries,” her two

central figures (roles, characters) are the perpetrators (criminals), and
victims, of the act of charm. They twist against the barbed wire (barb wire)
of human connection in an isolating world. This is a dark, absorbing story
of how first love can be as intoxicating (poisonous) and dangerous as
religious fundamentalism (religious extremism).

Will and Phoebe meet during the still-sweaty first days (the very first days)
of the college school year. Phoebe is a Korean-born, California-raised
freshman of relative means whose evident sexual confidence (an inevitable
sexual desire) ensnares (to trick someone in an unpleasant way and get
control of them) the ex-born-again (a Christian who lost the faith in God),
working-class (the social class that consists of people who do not have much
money, education, or power and who work mainly in manual jobs) Will.
Each of their narratives is told in the first person (được thuật lại bằng ngôi
thứ nhất), interspersed with brief chapters about John Leal, a fanatical
Christian cult leader (an enthusiastic follower of a mysterious religious
group) whose grip over (hold and attach very tightly) Phoebe grows in
parallel with (if two or more things happen in parallel, they happen at the
same time and are connected) hers over Will.

The novel is about extremism, yes, but it’s for anyone who’s ever been
captivated by another; for anyone who has been on either side of a
relationship that clearly has a subject and object of obsession; for anyone
who’s had a brush with (come in conflict with) faith, or who’s been fully
bathed in (to be laved in; to be embraced by) its teachings; for anyone afraid
of his or her own power.

Kwon makes real two characters who are, at first, types. Phoebe, in the
book’s opening pages, commands with her only-child, rich-girl arrogance,
a ponytailed (tóc đuôi ngựa: a hairstyle in which the hair is pulled together
and banded usually at the back of the head so as to resemble a pony's tail),
Korean-American version of the familiar manic pixie dream girl (MPDGs
are usually static characters who have eccentric personality quirks and are
unabashedly girlish). “I ate pain. I swilled tears. If I could take enough in,
I’d have no space left to fit my own,” Phoebe says. As her story goes on, the
reader learns that she once glittered with promise (had a wonderful expected
future’s potential) as a piano prodigy (a young talented pianist), her
discipline now replaced by casual self-destruction after the grief (a strong
feeling of sadness, usually because someone has died) and guilt of being
involved with her mother’s death in a car accident.

Will, waiting tables to pay for pâté, lies hopeless next to his girlfriend,
consumed. But he, too, transcends his role as the stable, economically
beleaguered (financially secure) Eagle Scout, before he falls completely
from grace.

Power, along with charm, is also an act in this novel. Phoebe mostly holds
power over (control) Will, the wounded enchantress who receives his love.
As Phoebe slips farther into fanaticism (take a big leap into the state of
fanatic) and the arms of John Leal, Will is driven desperately and jealously
to his own retaliatory exertion of control (the effort of holding and forcing
power over somebody else in retaliation/revenge).

Kwon’s ornate language (Language that is ornate contains too many

complicated words or phrases) adds a creeping anachronism
(/əˈnækrəˌnɪz(ə)m/ something that is no longer suitable for or relevant to
modern times) to the chapters. Its metaphors (the method of being figurative)
seem accessible (easily obtained) at first, but take a bit of parsing (to
examine and describe the grammar of a sentence or a particular word in a
sentence): “I lifted Phoebe’s hand; I kissed bitten nails that shine, in
hindsight (in retrospect), like quartz, spoils I pulled down from (earn) the
moon.” Throughout, objects are vaguely animated (unclearly illustrated),
as if someone is recalling the story years later: Frisbees soar, oil drips, bare
shoulders roll. Early on, “punch-stained red cups split underfoot, opening
into plastic petals.”

From Leal’s first appearance, he’s a harbinger of chaos (a sign of being

chaotic). A former student with a shady back story (a terrible background)
as a prisoner in North Korea, he looms over (to hang over or to hover over)
the narrative, peppering the shifting (to do the job of disordering scenery),
unsettling timeline (to disorder time-frame) of the love story. As Will and
Phoebe picnic with mulled wine (rượu vang nóng: an alcoholic beverage
usually served hot or warm and also a traditional drink during winter,
especially around Christmas), make summer plans, rent a weekend house
at the beach, Leal casts an ominous shadow (To fill a place with sadness,
grief, dread, or any strong negative emotion) for the reader, his chapters
delivering a piecemeal sermon (to give an unexpected take-away lesson) as
he slowly and steadily pulls the young couple’s strings and lays out, log by
log, what will be his final masterpiece: a pyre.

As the narrative escalates (the escalation of narrative), the reader goes from
a sane friend in a bar, listening impatiently as the storyteller gabs on about
(drone on about | rabbit on about) a new beau, red flags firing off in her
head (Do you not see what’s happening?), to a paralyzed (stand dumb due
to fear) spectator of a five-car pileup on the TV screen. Each horrible act
mounts on (climb up) the others, as Phoebe’s narratives get closer and closer
in tone and content to Leal’s.

On top of his pyre, Phoebe — a vessel through which life, or God, has
poured trauma (obstacle), grief, shame, discipline, love, loss of purpose and
a desire to please — is splayed. It’s Will who strikes the match (to light a
match by rubbing it on a rough surface).

The action picks up (process) quickly in the final chapters. (Readers may
want to skip the jacket description, which contains a giant spoiler.) A wedge
has been driven between the young lovers, and Will is left trying to piece
together what happened to his grinning, gin-doling girlfriend. The details
become sketchy and speculative (a bit abstract and not complete); the
narratives become unreliable.

This unusual novel, both raw and finely-wrought (well-wrought | carefully-

wrought: made or done in a careful or decorative way), leaves the reader
with very few answers and little to rely on. A love triangle between a young
man, a young woman and a higher purpose is torched (to light more noble
intention), with few witnesses to say what happened. Unsettled by all the
charming that’s gone up in flames (be destroyed by fire), Will and the reader
are left alone together holding the ashes, “some of the embers (a small piece
of burning or glowing coal or wood in a dying fire) still burning to leave
scars.”

Editor:
Lee Jang Woo: https://www.instagram.com/w.leejang/