One line I was really taken with from “Incendiary” is on page 108: “—Car salesmen promise Jasper, said Petra. Estate agents promise. Men in my life are supposed to fucking deliver.”
Here Petra makes a significant point – terrorists do not make empty promises or false threats. Their existence and success is totally premised on delivering. And Petra thrives after this delivery as she is promoted at the newspaper. The terrorists have done for her what she nor Jasper could do – enabled her to become a journalistic success. She is less concerned by the “terror” than she is by “spectacle” that she is able to constantly write about.
Another great line is on page 52: “So maybe it was 16 days after May Day or maybe it was only 8 when the death toll finally reached 1,000. I think the whole country was secretly hoping it would get there.”
For me, this was an allusion to the themes of games and chance that we talked about when reading Baudrillard. It almost reminded me of a video game and 1,000 points was the amount you needed to save the princess – or something.
Question for Chris Cleave:
Reading the novel, I found myself wondering: How/ Was it challenging to fabricate the grand and specific details of such a terrorist event? Did you even consider writing a novel specifically about the events of 9/11 and then decide on a fictional event? Did you take any inspiration from texts such as “1984”?