incendiary

while i was in my slice of heaven at powell's bookstore in portland, i seized a book and brought it home with me. i had great expectations for this book.

the same author had written another book {little bee} which changed my perspective. it changed me. and i loved the book for it-- the heartache and humor, the characters raw with human flaws and kindness. truth be told, i would recommend that book to anyone. my momma just finished it and she would do the same.


so you can imagine my chagrin when i read "incendiary". the back of the cover drew me in:

A distraught woman writes a letter to Osama bin Laden after her four-year-old son and her husband are killed in a massive suicide bomb attack at a soccer match in London. In an emotionally raw voice alive with grief, compassion, and startling humor, she tries to convince Osama to abandon his terror campaign by revealing to him the desperate sadness—"I am a woman built on the wreckage of myself"—and the broken heart of a working-class life blown apart.

seems riveting right? original, sad, but a statement. page after page i sunk into the woman's insanity, frantically reading with the hope things would turn around. because they had to, didn't they? her life was so utterly awful and graphic there had to be a silver lining, somewhere.
no.
everything ended terribly and i felt empty and utterly traumatized.

today a co-worker had a crumbled petal in his hair-- i immediately feared it was a piece of flesh. disturbing, i know. i have never read something so graphic. the detail was marvelous and terrifying. it was all i could do not to replay the explosion of people, skin melting and blood oozing as chunks of flesh rained from the sky, littering a soccer field.

*shiver*


what do you do when you hate a book but you can't stop thinking about it?
begin a new one.
which is precisely what i intend on doing tonight.