'The Incendiaries' Is A Poignant And Powerful Look At Campus Life

R.O. Kwon's new novel explores the attractions — and dangers — of faith, against the overheated, over-the-top backdrop of an upper-crust college somewhere in the Northeastern United State.

Rivaling Donna Tartt's celebrated debut, A Secret History, in its fevered treatment of American university life, R.O. Kwon's first novel The Incendiaries gives readers a juicy look at campus mores, though sometimes that juice is more bitter than sweet. Hormonal fumblings in the dark halls of post-adolescence can be painfully entertaining and entertainingly painful — I am reminded of what Lena Dunham's middle-aged gynecologist tells her character on Girls, after listening to Hannah's jejune blathering: "You could not pay me enough to be 24 again." Instead, we can rely on intense smarties like Kwon to tell us all about it.

In The Incendiaries, men and women on the cusp of adulthood bring loaded back stories to their couplings and uncouplings, leading inexorably (and a bit predictably) to tragic results. (Not a spoiler; the author spoils it for us on the second page, writing, "Buildings fell. People died.")

Phoebe Haejin Lin's unhappy past is at odds with her high-rolling life at a fictional school called Edwards, somewhere in the northeastern United States. She has become the campus It Girl, the ravishing one everyone wants to sleep with, wants to be. While others see only surface perfection — her long, glossy black hair, flawless skin and exquisite features — we get the real story in the character's first-person confessionals. The death of her mother in a car accident haunts her; an inexperienced Phoebe was at the wheel and her mom threw her body across that of her daughter to protect her. Another, more minor, secret: Phoebe was a piano prodigy until she abruptly quit, realizing she could never measure up to the masters. The failure dogs her.

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