Incendiary

I may be having delusions of Oprah right now, but I'm urging EVERYONE to read the novel Incendiary by Chris Cleave. It's heartbreakingly amazing, and I'm loving it sick. It hooked me from the opening line:

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.

So the whole thing is written as an open letter to Osama Bin Laden from this woman whos husband and four year old son were killed in an horrific terrorist strike on a London football stadium, and it's totally engrossing. And not just in a morbid sense, either. It's one of the most engaging books I've read in a VERY long time. Let me show you one more bit:

As for you I know you'd stop the bombs in a second if I could make you see my son with all your heart for just one moment. I know you would stop making boy shaped holes in the world. It would make you too sad. So I will do my best with these words Osama. I suppose you can see they don't come natural to me but I hope this letter finds you before the Americans do otherwise I'm going to wish I hadn't bothered aren't I?

I know that makes the book sound kinda preachy, but honestly, the earnestness of the narrator dispels that within the second page, and you just get really caught up in this lost, desperate womans memorial to her family. It's wonderful. Although it's books like these that make me doubt I'll ever actually become a writer, when you see just how amazing other people tend to be at it. It's funny- I didn't have the same thought whilst reading Stori Telling by Tori Spelling. I wonder why that is...