Re: [又有新片!] Incendiary
原著小說: (博客來買得到)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099490544/
http://www.amazon.com/Incendiary-Chris-Cleave/dp/1400096685/
書評的評價好像很好, 不過讀者還真是毀譽參半....
(可能是因為這本書上市時遇到倫敦地鐵爆炸案?? ^^b)
From Publishers Weekly
An al-Qaeda bomb attack on a London soccer match provides the tragicomic
donnee of former Daily Telegraph journalist Cleave's impressive multilayered
debut: a novel-length letter from an enraged mother to Osama bin Laden.
Living hand to mouth in London's East End, the unnamed mother's life is
shattered when her policeman husband (part of a bomb disposal unit) and
four-year-old son are killed in the stadium stands.
Complicating matters: our narrator witnesses the event on TV, while in the
throes of passion with her lover, journalist Jasper Black. The full story
of that day comes out piecemeal, among rants and ruminations, complete with
the widow's shell-shocked sifting of the stadium's human carnage. London
goes on high terror alert; the narrator downs Valium and gin and clutches
her son's stuffed rabbit.
After a suicide attempt, she finds solace with married police superintendent
Terrence Butcher and in volunteer work. When the bomb scares escalate,
actions by Jasper and his girlfriend Petra become the widow's undoing. 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.
Synopsis
Angry, funny, controversial and unpredictable, "Incendiary" will be one of
the most talked-about books of 2005. Not since Alex Garland's "The Beach" has
a debut novel used such compulsive storytelling to convey a distopian vision
of moral degradation. Not since Roddy Doyle's "The Woman Who Walked Into
Doors" has a male writer created such a powerful female voice.
From her first sentence, Cleave's narrator seduces the reader with her
biting, deadpan wit, her no-nonsense attitude and her love for her son.
Over the next 250 pages, we must watch her suffer. Eleven suicide bombers
turn the stadium into an inferno during an Arsenal-Chelsea match. Her
husband and four-year-old son are blown to smithereens. She is left with
an empty ex-Council flat in Bethnal Green and nothing to live for. And so
she writes Osama Bin Laden a letter to tell him just what she thinks, a
letter that takes the reader into a frightening maze of class-bound
relationships - and right to the dark heart of a London under siege.
A unique, twisted powerhouse of a novel, "Incendiary" has had readers
staying up all night to finish it, then up half the next night arguing
about it. Not since Martin Amis has a writer pinned a generation down on
a mat like this and refused to allow it up till it admits it's rotten.
From the Publisher
A family ripped apart by terrible events. A novel of unspeakable terror,
unbearable devastation - an unbounded love.
About the Author
Chris Cleave:
Chris Cleave was born in 1973 and graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with
a First in Experimental Psychology. After trying out various career paths,
including sailing in the Mediterranean and bar work in Melbourne, he worked
at the Daily Telegraph for three years, and then for Martha Lane Fox at
lastminute.com. He left there in 2003 to concentrate on writing full time. He
lives in Paris with his wife and son.
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