The Incendiaries

I love how Will's faith, that once burned with a white hot fervour, is still something that he misses. The certainty that faith brings. Phoebe, still plagued by guilt and needing something bigger than herself to believe in, needs that faith. She's pulled between John Leal who is singular in his focus and promises to be there when she's ready to be something more, and Will who's still just trying to figure it out.

But the book is far more slippery than that and maybe I'm just reaching. The conflict between the certainties of faith and struggling when you no longer have that as a foundation to build on. And more obliquely the notion that religion needs to make demands to incite fervour, that simply espousing kindness hardly invokes devotion. It sees Will proselytizing at Fisherman's Wharf filled with the Holy Spirit and Phoebe standing on a rooftop as explosions level a building.

It's not like I'm saying if you practice the faith it's only a matter of time before you're blowing up a building. I'm struggling to clarify my ideas so I should cut Kwon some slack for being as slippery as she was. I can hardly expect answers, I just wished there was more I could grab on to.

PS I love the Asian-American author community that Kwon name-drops in the acknowledgements! I talk more about that and laissez-faire atheism here: https://youtu.be/bY7DE8UZk0M