I have been spending quite a bit of time on trains lately commuting into NYC, so reading has come in quite handy to occupy my time. I finally got around to reading an Updike piece, this time Terrorist. He is one of those writers I had always meant to read but never got around to it. Knowing my deep love and fascination of post 9/11 literature, I heard Terrorist would fit nicely into that category. So I downloaded the book a few months ago to my Nook and with hours in a train, I just went ahead and read it.
Terrorist was a quick read, I’ll give it that. It was interesting. The premise follows an 18-year old half Irish and half Egyptian American kid about to graduate from high school. Despite being raised by his single Irish Catholic mother, he chooses to study Islam at 11 despite not remembering his father at all. An interesting choice. It seems like Updike is attempting to look at the psychology of a home grown terrorist. Except the fact he never properly explains how an 11-year-old choose Muslim and such an extreme form, jihad. Meanwhile his Irish Catholic mom seems clueless and the only one who pays attention is the school’s aging guidance counselor, who is sleeping with Ahmad’s mom fyi, who doesn’t pay attention to the boy until 2 months before graduation and he is the one who stops this all?
Terrorist seems like a poor imitation of American Psycho, that just missed the good psychological analysis. In addition to that, we get the bizarre pseudo-histories of the again guidance counselor and his lack of zeal towards life and his overweight wife. What she has to do with the story eludes me but we get a good deal of her history for no apparent reason. I’m just disappointed. It feels like a lame half-hearted attempt at something that could have been amazing, like The Reluctant Fundamentalist but never gels and never makes sense.
The ending is predictable and no real explanation is ever offered as to why it ends the way it does. It’s frustrating because the potential is there and it just goes flat.
I need another great novel to knock my socks off!
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