Monday, June 4, 2007
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is a quick read with an engaging convention. It is a sustained monologue by a Pakistani directed at a faceless American man opposite him at a café table in Lahore, Pakistan. It is clean, tight prose, and the last chapter reads like Edgar Allan Poe. Even though it is a short piece (184 pages) I would like to have seen some of the details of a certain romantic relationship dropped away. I got bogged down with someone I never cared about as a character. I had no problem with the faceless American; his mysterious persona is part of what drives the story forward. But if it were shorter, say a novella at 120 pages, would the book get any attention? Would it sell? Probably not. Even as it is, I wish that half of the people who raced to read The DaVinci Code would turn their attention here. Many Americans could do with walking in this protagonist’s shoes for the length of his story. And if they have a few friends to discuss it with when they step back into their own shoes, all the better.
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3 comments:
Sounds good. If I can make it to the library this week....
Reading your description of this book made me think of two of my recent reads: The Kite Runner and The Namesake. The Kite Runner I read reluctantly, sure I would hate it, and was surprised to find not only a beautiful story about friendship and redemption, but also a glimpse into an Afghanistan I had no idea existed. It changed the way I look at the country and the people who have come from it. The Namesake was not quite the work of art that Kite Runner was, but I have some good friends who are first generation Indian Americans, and so many things in the book reminded me of them, and helped me understand them, that I couldn't help but enjoy it. The movie was very close to the book.
I haven't read either but did see The Namesake. It had some lovely things about it, but my friend, Sophia and I agreed that the movie thought it was about the young man when it really was about the mother. Does the book tell the story from her point of view, or is the young man the focus?
Has anyone else read The Reluctant Fundamentalist? Without spoiling anything for our other readers, what did you think of it?
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