A campus novel for the current generation? Maybe.

Every generation yields its own campus novel, and a candidate for the current such novel is R.O. Kwon's debut, The Incendiaries. It's hard not to compare her work w/ the Donna Tartt's landmark, The Secret History, a terrific novel set in what was obviously Bennington and introducing a group of sharply drawn aesthete-intellectuals struggling to find themselves and eventually pitted against one another in a book that was both a murder mystery and a tragedy (and a ghost story as well). Kwon's is simpler in scope more grotesque in its characterizations, which may say something about today's college students or today's writers or just about this novel. I'm only about 1/3 through so offering no final judgements, but here's where we are: Kwon's novel is set in what appears to be Vassar, and her narrative rotates serially among 3 protagonists: John, who has spent time in China in a program to help people escape from N Korea and who was imprisoned for several months in a N Korean "gulag" - quite an unusual resume for a college sophomore; Will, a scholarship student who transferred in from a Bible college but who has lost his faith and who more or less supports his addicted mother; and Phoebe, a freshman, of Korean descent, who had been a piano prodigy but has given that up and who lost control of a car while driving illegally and whose mother was killed in the accident. These are 3 atypical characters by any measure, and the world in which Kwon places them is one of extremes as well: lots of sex, lots of drinking, much intellectual and social pretension, and virtually nothing about classes, studies, academics, careers - these are the privileged and the super-intelligent and it's no telling how they acquired such knowledge and mannerisms. I can accept all that, but to this point there's only a hint of a plot: The first chapter shows students watching a campus building explode, and that, playing off the title, is the "mystery" of this narrative, but Kwon is in no rush to building up to that point - nothing so far gives me any info as to who would plot let alone complete such a cowardly and mean act, nor why they would do so. To me the strongest scene in the novel so far is at the restaurant where Will is a waiter - something he hides from his so-called friends (what a shame); I would hope Kwon would make more of this setting rather than use it for just a dash of color; we'll see. (Comparisons w/ Tartt's novel may be unfair, but that novel engaged us w/ the narrative immediately, and the characters, while eccentric and exhibitionist, were engaged in serious academics, under the tutelage of a charismatic classics prof.)