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 Fundamentally hopeless... July 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Oh dear. It is rare you get the chance to read such a dispiritingly badly-written book as this. In a novella that is barely half a book-length, it is odd to be screaming for an editor. But this book badly needs someone to have pointed out the many problems, way before people were asked to spend cash on it.
As others have noted, the narrative voice is very, very annoying. It reads to me like a cod-Pakistani, an obtuse and ignorant caricature that owes much to Peter Sellers and patronising attitudes from decades ago, but nothing to modern Pakistan. Since the author is Pakistani, I wonder how this happened. Perhaps he was, in his own patronising way, portraying what he thought we might expect a Pakistani to sound like. He failed dismally. Failed us, and failed his own culture. It is risible.
The narrator's "love interest" Erica suffers from depression. I assume it is depression. In fact, the author clearly has no concept whatsoever of what depression is, or how to portray it. I laughed out loud several times as he tried. The best he could manage, was something akin to a Mills and Boon character suffering an attack of the vapours. She swoons, she eats haphazardly, she puts her hand to her forehead a lot. This is a woman spiralling into suicide, remember. The Erica character does not even need to be there. She exists as Hamid's clunkingly bad "metaphor for America". Feeble and pitiful in its' execution, it is a bad idea.
The whole book hinges on the main character's reaction to 9/11, and subsequent move towards fundamentalism. Let's leave aside how the character's back story resembles the author's (a shallow, lazy and conceited way to write). At no stage does the reader get any sense of the major changes in the world from this book. The character is not even in New York on 9/11, and there is little description of his impression of it. Almost everyone can remember watching this event, and their reaction. Hamid's character views it much like watching a Cup Final.
The author totally fails to give any sense of why the main character would turn against the life he currently lives. No-one slights the character, insults him, threatens his fundamental beliefs or impugns his character. There is no credible reason - or even analysis - of why the change might take place. And what change is it? In the last few pages he reports some things that he may, or may not, be involved in. So we are left with the option of him being a stupid little fantasist boring a stranger witless.
It is easy to imagine the conversation at the publishing house. I'm Pakistani, and I've written a book about a Muslim who returns to Pakistan after 9/11. I can't write to save my life, though, is that okay? Oh, good. I'm a dumb publisher who will print anything with `Muslim' and `9/11' in it. Oh, and let's have an annoying smugshot of you on the back cover, too. Let's not bother if it's any good, it has `fundamentalist' in the title. We'll get someone to call it powerful, a savage indictment, the most important book about 9/11, blah, blah.
There is nothing wrong with ambiguity, if it springs from intelligence and depth. There is nothing wrong with a short and simple book, if it has power and resonance and clarity. There is everything wrong with this book. It is shallow, cliched, simplistic, poorly written, devoid of any intent or insight. This book is a quite miserable effort, from an author who exhibits no skill at all. He is at least ten years away from showing the control, imagination and ability to write a half-decent novel. Let's hope it's ten years before we see his next one.
 The Reluctant Fundamentalist June 23, 2008
This was a very interesting, challenging read. I agree with the previous reader that there may be an intended ambiguity about who the fundamentalist is. The capitalist younger man or the Pakistani Muslim side of the man.
There is the bizarre revelation that the hero feels exaltation and pleasure when he sees the plane go into the Twin Tower building. This is not analysed with any particular scrutiny by the narrator and that is perhaps one of the flaws of the book. Another flaw is that we don't really get to know the voice of the woman with whom he is infatuated - so I was left wondering who she really was, why she was so depressed and gave up on life so easily.
The ending was bizarre - I ought not to reveal it - but it was like the end of a thriller. I would recommend this to others who perhaps lean towards critical of American foreign policy but ultimately it doesn't really go nearer to explaining Muslim Fundamentalism.
Brilliant introspective of a repented Jannissary June 19, 2008
At the end of this book you may be left with a bitter taste in your mouth, with the sensation that the climax of the novel was not completely fulfilled.
However it is certain that a so-called Western person is left with a little better grasp of the Pakistani culture and way of seeing, and with a little (this time only a little) better understandment of the drive to fundamentalism that the 9/11 attacks provoked.
The key of reading of this book is surely not an extended interpretation of Changez's story, cause that might leave you disappointed lately. I believe you should in fact look at the narrator's story as an almost isolate case, deep and intelligent, but still an individual's story.
A definite plus for this novel is Changez's aristocratic, maniacally studied and careful choice of words and way of recounting to his American fellow this beautiful story of infatuation and desenchantment with the American culture. His frequent digressions about Pakistani culture are a great diversification for what could be a pretty "heavy" reading.
All in all a great reading, suggested to anyone who's interested in deepening a little more in the psychology of fundamentalism and the relativism of today's world.
Who is the Reluctant Fundamentalist? The Underwood Samson's Changez who must "Focus on fundamentals" to get his job done, or the Lahore's Changez, a man who manages to get back to his land's fundamentals?
 Unusual but good June 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I didn't have any preconceptions about what this book should or shouldn't be. I found the narrative style refreshing if unusual. To me, it is one man's story of how he became disillusioned with the world he was living in and the things that led him to question his values. Like some of the other reviewers, I did feel at times that I was waiting for a big revelation. However, maybe that is the author's skill in keeping the reader hooked. I didn't feel that the fact there was no big revelation a disappointment. It is a quick read which is thought provoking in places. I loved it.
 Great story, pity the narrative is so annoying June 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
An international bestseller that has been translated into some 16 languages, The Reluctant Fundamentalist has also been shortlisted for a host of literary awards including the Man Booker Prize 2007, the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2007 and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2008. But it has also attracted much flak centered around its alleged anti-American stance (it's no plot spoiler to say that the main character smiles when he sees the collapse of the World Trade Towers on TV, pleased because "someone had so visibly brought America to her knees").
In my opinion, this is shallow criticism, because the book's greatest failing is not its content, but the way in which the story is narrated. This is a fictional account of a young, intelligent and ambitious Pakistani who is educated at Princeton University and secures a highly desirable job in New York. When he falls in love with a troubled rich white girl he begins to realise that her material trappings cannot alleviate her pain. Then, following the attacks on the World Trade Centre, when the entire city is in mourning, he begins to question the purpose of his own life and the Western values that leave him feeling so cold, detached and unfulfilled. He returns to Lahore, and it is here that his story begins: a first-person narrative that is addressed to an unseen acquaintance (effectively you, the reader) in a little cafe as dusk descends.
It is this narrative device that I found particularly troublesome. The tone of the voice is cool, arrogant and slightly menacing, which is fine. But every now and then the narrative flow is interrupted by rather clunky direct addresses to the unseen acquaintance -- "But observe! A flower seller approaches. I will summon him to our table. You are not in the mood? Surely you cannot object to a single strand of jasmine buds." -- which act as unwanted reminders that you are reading a book which means you can never fully lose yourself in the story.
This is a great shame, because it's a good story about an issue not much discussed in popular literature, that of the foreign man who's turned his back on the American dream. If nothing else it's a thought-provoking read and would certainly make great fodder for a book group discussion, but on the whole I found The Reluctant Fundamentalist disappointing and nowhere near as exciting or as provocative as I had been lead to believe. And the conclusion, which is as predictable as they come, left me feeling like I'd been terribly short-changed.
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