A monologue narrated by Changez to a mysterious American in a Lahore cafe, this is an intriguing book that is difficult to put down. Changez takes his audience through his life from arrival in America for college aged 18, his relationships to Pakistan and America, his relationship with the American, Erica (see what they did there?) and his gradual disenchantment with his Westernised life. The part about his reaction to 9/11 is, I think, supposed to be shocking, and is indeed not presented in isolation, given a strong and complex context. I wasn't shocked, but then again I think I'd maybe be typical of the people that would pick up this book in the first place.

I hope I'm wrong there, as this book does a lot to "normalise" and contextualise the kind of person Changez appears to be, an immigrant trying to settle in a new country, sometimes becoming more American than the Americans, sometimes hopelessly out of his depth and out of place.

The atmosphere of the cafe, probably because I've sat in similar in Tunisia, was beautifully done, and the subtle build-up of menace as we realise that, let alone Changez, we really don't know who this American is, was really well done too.

A compulsive, interesting read. ( )

Very thought provoking. Loved it. I was waiting for something more to happen perhaps. But in the end felt nice overall. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

So, continuing CCLaP's look this month at the 2007 Booker Prize nominees (both short-list and long), today's review is of the blackly humorous The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, which along with Darkmans by Nicola Barker and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan are definitely the three most commercially popular titles of all the ones chosen this year by the Booker nominating committee. And to tell you the truth, I have a feeling that today's review is going to be shorter than normal, because of the book itself being shorter than most that I review here -- it's barely 180 pages long, with a whole lot of space between each line of text, and with the story itself being more of a "bildungsroman" (that is, a detailed character study) than a traditional three-act plot-based novel.

The central character being examined, in fact, is a young Pakistani male named Changez, who is using a dinner with an American at a cafe in his native Lahore as an excuse to tell us all about his own experiences in America, in the years both immediately preceding and immediately following September 11th. And in fact this is pretty much the entire reason this wisp of a novel even exists, as a character study of Changez himself, and to show how ultimately he doesn't want anything different than any other twentysomething middle-class yearner out there in the world -- a good job, a little savings, a loving spouse, lots of crap to impress the neighbors. A quiet, unabashed nerd while growing up in the Middle East, Changez ends up receiving a scholarship to attend Princeton; while there he becomes the exact overachiever that so many international students do at American universities; this leads him to an entry-level job at financial firm Underwood Sampson & Co., becoming the latest in a long line of employees whose job is to determine the economic value of the various businesses who hire them on for insurance and liquidation purposes.

And, you know, for the most part I just described the entire plot of this novel, which is why I think today's review is probably going to be shorter than usual; because frankly there's just not that much more to say about The Reluctant Fundamentalist, besides that it's well-written and will produce a chuckle every so often, and can be read by most people from cover to cover in only half a day or so. I mean, it's not bad, that's not the point I'm trying to make; in fact, several elements of the story are very good indeed, such as the extremely dry and formal humor on display, kinda like watching George Bernard Shaw reincarnated as an Arabic geek who happens to also be a middle-class New Yorker. It's just that it's all so...oh, I don't know, just so inconsequential, I guess. It's just one of those books that I suspect three months from now I will have forgotten I ever read in the first place; a story much better suited for reading in The New Yorker during a particularly long bathroom session on a Sunday afternoon, not as a standalone book for 22 freaking dollars that's been nominated for what many consider the most prestigious literary award on the planet.

And then there's that ending, which I didn't care for at all, because it feels just as short and rushed as the rest of the book -- a ten-page coda that basically says, "And then 9/11 happened and Americans became a bunch of a--holes and I decided to move back home and become a terrorist. Um, the end." That, plus the way this information is actually relayed to the audience, feels like a sitcommy gimmick on Hamid's part, the literary equivalent of a pie in the face, a plot twist that is broadcast so far in advance by the author that I was seriously on the lookout for a rimshot when the reveal was finally made. As mentioned, I don't really have too much else to say today about The Reluctant Fundamentalist; it's one of those books perfect for checking out at a library or borrowing from a friend, if one even wants to deal with it at all, certainly not something you want to be blowing 22 bucks on, for as little entertainment as it actually affords. It baffles me, in fact, how such a non-excuse for a book could get nominated for the Booker; but then again, most things about precious academic literary awards baffle me, and I learned a long time ago not to try to make sense of them.

Out of 10: 6.6 ( )

Title: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Author: Mohsin Hamid
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
# of pages: 208
Start date:9/17/09
End date:9/19/09
Borrowed/bought: borrowed
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best]: B

Description of the book: In the Reluctant Fundamentalist, we meet Changez, a young and talented man who recently graduated from Princeton University to work for a powerful business firm Underwood Samson. Flash forward Changez tells his dining companion about his story in a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan.
Review: I liked his his use of Erica as a metaphor for (Am)Erica. At the end of the book, I still was not sure what the intentions of the author were. Did the American he was dining with murder him? Did he murder the American? Did he and the American strike some kind of deal? I also liked the character Juan Bautista- John the Baptist. This is definitely not a book I would have necessarily chosen for myself but it did open my eyes to international relations. ( )

The title and style of the book are both distractions. If an author is going to use the technique, whereas, you the reader are an active participant in the story, the ending should have more of a bang. There is an attempt at this, but it is a meandering attempt. The protagonist of the story is a Pakastani born student in the United States. He is the top of his class and is recruited by one of the top investment firms as a financial analyst. His job is referred to as a "fundamentalist". He goes into a business and attempts to find its true worth, at times, recommending cutting a business down to its fundamentals. This refers to both his job and eventually his beliefs.The storyline is very choppy as the main character is telling his story to you, a "tourist" in Pakistan. He approaches you and welcomes you to his country and begins to tell the story of his life. It jumps back and forth from the story into "real time". This is too much of a distraction to pull off and seems unnecessary. Eventually, he changes her perspective from America as his new "home", to America as the enemy. This is a direct result of the September 11th attacks and the move by the United States to cause problems in Pakistan-Indian relations. Overall, not a great book, not sure it was on the Booker list. Here are some my favorite quotes though:"Often, as we stood or sat in the midst of an impeccably turned-out crowd, I would observe that she was utterly detached, lost in a world of her own. her eyes were turned inward, and remarks made by her companions would register only indirectly on her face, like the shadows of clouds gliding across the surface of a lake. She smiled when it was brought to her attention that she seemed distant, and said she was, as usual, spacing out. But had come to suspect that hers were not merely the lapses of the absent-minded; no, she was struggling aginst a current that pulled her within herself, and her smile contained the fear that she might slip into her own depths, where she would be trapped, unable to breath." p 86"...I knew even then that she was disappearing into a powerful nostalgia, one from which only she could choose whether or not to return." p113 ( )