Well, simply put, this book reads like a cheesy paperback, or comes across like an episode of some TV detective mini-series. Everyone was a stereotype, everything so predictable where deus ex machina saves the day. Updike uses beautiful prose when describing something, but that's about it. It's disappointing to see a theme such as this which could be explored in all its levels and nuances, be treated in this shallow and rather cheap way. ( )

Compelling, tightly focused vision of entropic America early in the millennium. Has there every been a more stylish curmudgeon? Always the mysogynyst, Updike's older women are hilariously drawn but without exception stupid. ( )

Deciding whether Updike succeeded in portraying a complicated development of a terrorist, or if he merely expressed a cliché and gave it stereotypical life, the weight of my feeling hedges toward the later. My uncertainty arises due to his well developed tone of sarcasm and irony with which he populates the novel, perhaps overpopulates. Though an intriguing representation of hysteria and fear pervasive after 9/11, I wonder if his intention does not become muddled in the disdain he evinces toward his main character, indeed, most of his characters.

While reading about Ahmad and his mixed ethnic upbringing, his rather flighty mother, the high school counselor with decent intentions and a wandering eye, and the rapaciously stereotyped mullah, I could not shake Updike's pejorative presentation of them and the events to which they subscribe, collude, and surrender. Perhaps this falls entirely within Updike's plan, to build a distance from the characters, but it provoked a less involved and less interested reading from me. I longed to have some measure of sympathy for Ahmad, despite the stupidity and gullibility of his youth, even a fraction of a desire to slap him upside the head would have been better than the indifference I felt.

The thread of Ahmad's fanaticism and objection to the sybaritic consumerism of his American home and surroundings was also tantalizingly insufficient; Updike had the opportunity to offer scathing reproach through Ahmad, and instead it felt merely like the whining of a spoiled child, an insouciant attempt to proffer justification for Ahmad's later actions. Without this involvement of character I felt like the novel was a hollow platform to criticize attitudes toward terrorist activity, edging precariously near racist propaganda, lacking the strident support of satire, the subtle nudge and wink to let the reader become aware of the hypocritical nature of most terrorist discourse. ( )

This is the first book by Updike I'd ever read, and will also be the last. To call the characters "wooden" would be generous. Most of them are not characters at all, but simply racist, sexist stereotypes with no discernable human emotion or motivation. The plot is neither imaginative nor realistic. The language is awkard, unpolished, pedestrian. I cannot believe that Updike is considered a great writer. If indeed he was a ever a great writer, that greatness must have been completely exhausted by the time he wrote this book. I can only assume that some people consider it great because of the timely theme. ( )

Very true reality. ( )