In today’s often polarized and hyper-partisan environment conservatives will be tempted to simply write off Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist as just another anti-American screed masquerading as fiction. Those on the opposite end may want to label it in a similar fashion but approve of the politics. That would be a mistake. Yes, the book does contain anti-American sentiment and passages that are, to my mind, rather banal leftist complaints about the xenophobic and destructive nature of the American “empire.” But to categorize this book as simply a political rant dressed-up as art is to deny both its aesthetic merit and the cultural insights it might offer.

Fundamentalist takes the unique form of an extended monologue – one half of a conversation really - given by the central character, a Pakistani man named Changez, to an unnamed American in a Lahore outdoor cafe. Changez recognizes the man as an American and, after recommending a spot for tea, begins to tell the stranger of his own experience in America and the events that led to his return to Pakistan.

There is a great deal of ambiguity involved as Changes relates his story: exactly who is the American and why is he in Pakistan? There is a sense of foreboding surrounding the stranger; a peculiar bulge is noted under his sport coat and he admits to experience with violence and perhaps even war. Does he mean harm to Changez - has he come to Pakistan to seek him out? Hamid never directly reveals the answers; even the ending is ambiguous. Instead, the reader is left to come to his own conclusions about what is happening and why.

This one sided conversation is a risky and difficult format to pull off, but Hamid succeeds for the most part. The story moves at a good pace and Changez/Hamid proves to be an adept storyteller. The tension builds steadily but Hamid smoothly uses the mundane interruptions at the café (the waiter taking their orders, bringing food, drinks, desert, the activities of passersby, the darkening evening, etc.) to allow the reader to catch their breath.

Changez’s story is a sort of rags to riches to rags again tale. Immigrant from a well respected - but economically deteriorating – family gets accepted to Princeton and parlays that into a job at a famous “valuation” firm in New York City and entering the high pressure world of international finance. Along the way, he falls for a beautiful, but troubled, young American from a wealthy family. His future seems bright and exciting.

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Not all that surprisingly given my rack record on these things, I have not produced the promised review of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I am close, but want to try and bring a little more clarity to my thinking and writing before I post on it.

In lieu of this, I am sure, heavily anticipated review allow me to offer something a little different. There have been a number of debates and discussions - some quite heated - on book blogs regarding the potential conflict of interest involved in getting free books. There are a lot of sides to this debate and its implications. You have some professional critics slamming blogs as ignorant gossip sites kissing up to each other. You have some lit blogs standing up for the medium. But you also have some bloggers expressing a great deal of concern that blogs have been co-opted into becoming unpaid marketers and publicists just by the allure of free books and recognition.

I don’t intend to get into a lengthy discussion of the issue here, but I wanted to take a look at this idea through the lens of some reviews of the same book. While doing some background surfing on the recently released
Ladykiller by Lawrence Light and Meredith Anthony I was struck by the wide divergence of opinions on this book. What follows is sampling of reviews and then a discussion of both my take on the book itself, the reviews, and the issue of free books.

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I knew nothing about Val McDermid before I received The Grave Tattoo in the mail. But it looked to be an interesting blend of literary historical mystery (plus, I liked the cover). And it was that. The problem was not so much with the conception as the execution.

Start with the plot. Chauncey Mabe at Pop Matters describes it this way:

Struggling Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham is waiting tables in London to make ends meet when a tattooed “bog body” turns up in the Lake District where she grew up. The body, also dating from the 17th century, bears tattoos suggesting a sojourn in the South Seas, reviving a local legend that Fletcher Christian, leader of the Bounty mutineers, returned home from Pitcairn Island before he died.

Gresham has a theory that Christian shared his story with childhood chum Wordsworth, who turned it into an epic poem. Now she takes a break from her university teaching assistantship to go home and try to find the lost document in the family papers of longtime Lake District families. Almost as soon as she gets home, people start dying under suspicious circumstances.

Meanwhile, Tenille, a 13-year-old from the tough London neighborhood where Gresham rents a bed-sit, runs afoul of police after her aunt’s troublesome boyfriend is murdered. Beguiled by Tenille’s love of poetry, Gresham befriended the girl, who now follows her to the country and becomes involved in hiding from police and helping search for the lost manuscript

Others searching for the valuable document include Gresham’s charming, greedy ex-boyfriend, while River Wilde, a beautiful and ambitious young pathologists, has taken an interest in producing a television series about the bog body.

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Due some complex issues in my “real life” I haven’t been able to write the kind of reviews and commentary I would like. Finding the right combination of time, energy, and concentration just hasn’t been possible. The Enemy at Home is a book I had hoped to review and discuss at some length, but it just didn’t happen (I still might circle around to it at some point).

Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is another book I have been meaning to cover here but so far haven’t. I think I am on the verge of offering a review, however, so I thought I would offer some links to whet your whistle for my own review/discussion.

- Vikram Johri has a review in the Philly Inquirer: A perplexing shift to hatred of America.

- Also, in the Inquirer is an interview with Hamid by John Freeman: Author loves U.S., but says, ‘My world has been split apart’.

- Freeman also had a discussion with Hamid in February.

- The Book was featured as a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection and they have a video of Hamid discussing his background, etc.

- Amazon.com also had an interview as part of their promotion of the book.

That should be enough to get you started. I hope to have my review up this week.

In my discussion of Howard Norman’s latest book Devotion I noted that he was an author whose work I would tend to pick up and read as soon as it was released; or at least as soon as I became aware of it. Having wrote this, it struck me as a good time to go back and catch up on the the books I had not yet read. I happened to have The Northern Lights on the shelf and so bumped it up the TBR pile and read it.

The Northern Lights was Norman’s first novel so it is interesting to go back and see many of the same ideas and themes that populate his later works. The story centers around 14-year-old Noah Krainik who lives with his mother and cousin in Northern Manitoba. Noah, however, spends large chunks of time away from his family farther north with his best friend Pelly Bay. Noah’s father is largely absent from his life and he is forced to try and make sense of the world mostly on his own.

Pelly’s tragic death and the disappearance of Noah’s father set off a series of events that lead to Noah’s mom and cousin moving to Toronto with Noah soon to follow. Noah’s mom Mina ends up working at, and then buying, the movie theater where she worked when she married his father - The Northern Lights of the book’s title. The married owner becomes infatuated with her and when rebuffed turns to drink and increasingly unstable behavior. This behavior causes him to lose, and Mina to acquire, the theater.

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Simon Scarrow’s fourth book in the Eagle’s Series, The Eagle and the Wolves, is an excellent story about the Roman Army when the Roman Empire was at its strongest, 1st Century AD. Scarrow does a superb job in bringing the characters to life.

Here is a summary from the book’s cover:

In the epic fourth novel of Simon Scarrow’s series, it’s ad 44 and Vespasian and the Roman Army’s Second Legion are forging ahead in their campaign to seize the southwest. Centurion Macro and newly appointed Centurion Cato are ordered by Vespasian to provide Verica, aged ruler of the Atrebates, with an army. They must train his tribal levies into a force that can protect him, enforce his rule, and take on the increasingly ambitious raids that the enemy is launching.
But open revolt is brewing. Despite the Atrebates’ official allegiance to Rome, many are wary of the legions and want to resist the Roman invaders, and Macro and Cato must first win the loyalty of the disgruntled levies before tackling the enemy without. Can they succeed while surviving a deadly plot to destroy both them and their comrades serving with the eagles? In the midst of this highly volatile situation, Macro and Cato face the greatest test of their army careers. Theirs is a brazen tale of military adventure, political intrigue, and heroism, as only they stand between the destiny of Rome and bloody defeat.

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Andrew Gross has had an interesting career path. After a successful career in the apparel industry Gross decided to try his hand at writing (he majored in English in college). His novel was rejected but an editor liked his writing enough to send it on to best selling author James Patterson. Patterson saw enough promise to contact Gross and offer him a chance to collaborate on a novel. They soon had a contract and were off and running. The resulting collaboration produced five number one New York Times bestsellers.

Building on this success, Gross decided to strike out on his own and was signed by William Morrow to a three book deal. The first of which, The Blue Zone, was recently released. Not having read any of his co-authored works - nor any James Patterson for that matter - I can’t really compare this solo effort with his previous work, but The Blue Zone is a solid thriller with plenty of twists and turns. While it didn’t quite strike me as the proverbial “Can’t put it down” type, it certainly shows enough promise to think Gross will do just fine flying solo.

The story centers around Kate Rabb, a medical researcher in the Bronx. Kate has what seems like the perfect life: a successful career, a loving family, and a wonderful husband. She is excited about the future. This all changes in an instant when her father is arrested on charges of laundering money for a Columbian drug cartel. Her seemingly perfect family’s life literally explodes during a burst if gunfire in what appears to be an attempt to kill them all by the Colombians.

This danger forces them into the witness protection program - all except Kate who decides she is unwilling to put her promising life on hold. But, as you might expect in a thriller, everything is not as it seems and one by one things begin to unravel. Her close friend and co-worker is nearly killed; her dad disappears from the witness protection program; a FBI agent assigned to her family is brutally murdered; and she finds some evidence that her family’s past is a lot more complicated than she has been led to believe.

Unsure of who to trust Kate soon strikes out on her own to try and get to the bottom of her father’s deception and the events that have turned her life upside down. As the violence around her escalates, Kate must decide who she can trust or she might lose her own life in the process.

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The Normandy Campaign by Victor Brooks is an excellent short history of one of the most pivotal military campaigns in history. Brooks succinctly describes the main characters and events of this momentous event.

The book more or less goes in chronological order from the Allies’ first inklings of an invasion of mainland Europe to the eventual capture of Paris. It describes the painstaking preparations for gathering the mountains of supplies for the invasion and the efforts the Allies made in trying to deceive the Germans where the actual landing was going to occur (including creating a false Army under the command of General George Patton).

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- The Tourists by Jeff Hobbs

Publishers Weekly

An unnamed narrator details the post-Yale love triangle of three people much, much wealthier than he in Hobbs’s Gatsby-meets-McInerney debut. Unlike Nick Carraway or the persistent “You” of Bright Lights Big City, the speaker at the heart of this novel is more cipher than seer. A shiftless New York freelancer edging into his 30s, the narrator discovers that his Yalie friend—handsome, gay Ethan Hoevel, famous designer of sleek contemporary furniture—has left his boyfriend, Stanton Vaughn, to pursue a doomed relationship with their fellow alum—the married (and female) Samona Taylor (née Ashley). The narrator still carries a torch for Samona, and renews his friendship with Samona’s husband, the also-Yalie Merrill Lynch trader David Taylor, mostly out of a morbid curiosity about Samona’s philandering. Hobbs spends much of the novel recounting how everyone got where they are in the eight years following college, but the plot picks up in the last third, when Ethan’s ne’er-do-well brother precipitates a crisis, and Ethan and Samona’s affair has its reckoning. Hobbs convincingly portrays young, Ivied New Yorkers with money, but he leaves the narrator’s feelings for Samona (and much else) largely unexplored, making the proceedings feel unresolved.

- Ladykiller by Lawrence Light and Meredith Anthony

Book Description

In the city that never sleeps, evil is wide awake. From the bright lights of Times Square to the dark alleys of New York, the Ladykiller is at work and at prey. Four women savagely murdered on the mean streets of NYC. The Ladykiller leaves no trail, no clues. The pressure is on for NYPD detective Dave Dillon - either he solves the crime or he can kiss his job goodbye.

When Dave joins forces with Megan Morrison, a beautiful young social worker, the search for a cold-hearted killer leads to a hot romance. But a host of forces threaten to intrude. Megan’s jealous mentor would delight in derailing the romance, as would Jamie, a determined detective with her own not-so-hidden agenda. And Dave’s shadowy past is never far behind. The clock is ticking for Dave and Megan. Will they close in on the shocking truth behind the crimes, or will it close in on them? In the world of the Ladykiller, passion can turn deadly in a New York minute.

- Untold Stories by Alan Bennett

Publishers Weekly

Bennett has been known to British audiences of radio, television, stage and screen for decades. In the United States, he’s best known as the screenwriter of The Madness of King George and, perhaps, for his experiences with Miss Shepherd, an indigent woman who set up a succession of vans in his front yard for 15 years. Now he returns with a shaggy collection of autobiographical sketches, diary entries, considerations of art, architecture and other authors, as well as an account of his bout with colon cancer. Returning to the precincts of his straitlaced, working-class British background, Bennett reveals a lost world whose influence and mores have trailed him his entire life. He revisits the Leeds that he knew in the 1940s, where he was first exposed to music and theater, and where his parents, both shy and retiring people, set lack of pretension as the highest value. While he plays the old crank who is put upon by the world as it is, Bennett reveals an eye for detail and a feel for the complexity of human interactions. And though he laments at length his own late maturation—physical, sexual and intellectual—and lack of sophistication, he shows himself to have achieved a measure of happiness.

- Captain of the Sleepers by Mayra Montero

Booklist

Montero charts the chilling undercurrents of steamy Caribbean life in novels notable for their lyrical intensity and mystery, eroticism and social acumen. Here, she writes of Puerto Rico as the ill-fated nationalist movement comes undone in 1950 and the U.S. military conducts practice bombing runs in preparation for the Korean War. Montero uses a classic flashback frame as Andres, then the 12-year-old son of a hotel owner, now meets with a man he has been estranged from for 50 years, J. T., a pilot young Andres called the Captain of the Sleepers because he ferried the dead. In his eighties and ill with cancer, J. T. wants to make things right. As J. T. tells his version of past events, Montero illuminates Andres’ boy-mind at work as he tries to understand his father’s involvement with the revolutionaries, J. T.’s role in their lives, and his mother’s early death. The result is a haunting tale of a small place overrun by a superpower and a small family shattered by big dreams of liberation and love, and the mythic alignment of sex and death.

Regular readers will recall that I am a fan of children’s or young adult fantasy series. I have been reading a number of series as new books come out. One such series is the Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. Although I haven’t really reviewed each book in the series, I have discussed the series as a whole.

In fact, in that post I outlined the series pretty well:

The first three books follow the lead character Twig from his intial adventure in the Deepwoods through his search for the magical stormphrax with his real father and his subsequent flight out into the void of open sky where the entire crew is scattered across the Edge. But the Curse of the Gloamgozer goes back in time to explore the story of Twig’s father and mother. The next three books in the series (The Last Sky Pirate, and the yet to be released in the states Vox and Freeglader) focus on the Rook Barkwater character and take place fifty years after the end of Midnight Over Sanctaphrax.

The most recent book I have read is Freeglader book seven and, as noted above, last in the Rook Barkwater stretch of books (5,6,7). This volume, like the other books, is a complicated mix of characters and story lines. Freeglader, however, connects and explains much of the series so far by relating the history of Rook’s family tree.

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