This book, if one were hoping for a detailed explanation of what leads some young American Muslims to become terrorists, doesn't quite deliver. It fares even worse as a thriller. However, if read as a long personal letter from the seventy-something John Updike, it has its merits.

He no longer grasps the teens he encounters on the street. He attempts to envision their thought processes, their conversations, and their behaviors when in each other's company, yet he fails. It's as if there is an impenetrable force field around them that repels his curious mind. This is a disappointment, and there are others that are even more disheartening. He has reached a point where he can no longer find women his own age appealing. Miraculously, some younger women are still interested in sharing their beds with him. Sex gives him a temporary sense of vitality and strength. But the emotional bond is lacking. He can't be a significant figure to his lovers because he knows he is soon going to die, and they are aware of it too. Eventually, they decide to move on.

Despite all this, life isn't overly糟糕. He knows how to observe the interesting and beautiful aspects that surround him. The grass growing through the concrete in a parking lot, the sunlight glinting off a roof after a rainy afternoon, a beetle struggling to right itself after being flipped onto its back, the sensation of driving a well-maintained truck. He can view these from a perspective he has cultivated over seventy years and transform them into elegant sentences that capture some of that beauty for his readers. They are receding into the unknown future at an accelerating pace, but his words can still reach them if they pause and focus. Maybe they will be subtly changed at a crucial moment that makes a difference. This is what keeps him writing.

Some people complain that not enough occurs in "Terrorist," but that misses the point. This book isn't about action and events. It's about something else entirely.

*Some spoilers, but they don't really matter*

John Updike's work doesn't actually take on Muslim extremism with sensitivity and believability as one might expect. Instead, what we get is a rather detailed exploration of the sexual thoughts and attractions of each character. Ahmad's mother is not his type; he has a preference for the brown and black girls from school. Meanwhile, his mother finds him sexy in his track shorts. Charlie, the jihadist who turns out to be undercover CIA and meets a tragic end, has some rather inappropriate thoughts about the actress in the ED commercials and also wants to get Ahmad laid to initiate him into some sort of "brotherhood". Mr. Levy, the graying guidance counselor, is disgusted by his fat wife but is having an affair with Ahmad's mom and gets turned on by her white Irish body. He also feels aroused when he sees female students at the school wearing low-cut jeans, which were in fashion in 2006. Ahmad is reluctantly attracted to classmate Joryleen's curves, and there is a strange encounter where she is paid to deflower him, but he regrets not going through with it fully. And as Ahmad is about to enter a tunnel to detonate a car bomb for Allah, he drives by two male police officers leering at a bosomy female police officer. I view this work more as an experiment born from curiosity rather than a serious novel. This way, I don't feel too disappointed or deflated.

This was my very first encounter with a J Updike book, and I must say that I was truly impressed by the remarkable quality of his writing.

His sentences are indeed quite long, which initially requires one to concentrate hard until they become accustomed to this style.

He is an extremely intelligent writer who has crafted a satire on the cosmopolitan life of the western 21st century. The focus of the story is on the main character, Ahmad, who hails from an Arabic background. Ahmad chooses to opt out of the modern consumerist, racist, and non-religious way of life. He is more interested in idealism rather than a career or his own "self-preservation and advancement." In fact, he wants nothing to do with western culture. At the end, he utters the poignant words, "they have taken away my god."

Levy, his career advisor, who ironically is Jewish, does his utmost to help Ahmad but initially gives up on him as a lost cause. Levy seems a bit out of touch with younger people, which is yet another jab at our current ageing population and the general lack of empathy for the young.

The book effectively shows how an outsider like Ahmad, who has freely turned to Islam, can be drawn into terrorism. The studying of the Koran appears to justify the killing of those who do not follow the religion and do not lead a pure life. This is regarded as evil by the majority of people, but the book unfortunately does not provide any answers as to how western civilization could or should address this complex issue.

I was really looking forward to this book when I started reading it. However, after getting through about 80 pages, I just couldn't take it anymore and dropped it.

The story seemed to be going nowhere, and the characters lacked depth and development. I found myself constantly bored and unengaged.

The writing style was also rather平淡, without any real excitement or flair. It felt like the author was just going through the motions, rather than truly trying to tell a captivating story.

Overall, I was extremely disappointed with this book and would not recommend it to anyone. I'm glad I stopped reading when I did, rather than wasting more of my time on it.

I truly believed that this book was an utter waste of time. The characters within it were crafted as mere caricatures of tired stereotypes. There wasn't a single character with whom one could establish an emotional connection or feel any sense of empathy. It was a disappointment from start to finish. The plot seemed to lack any real substance or depth, and the writing style failed to engage me on any level. I would highly recommend that others save their time and not bother with this particular book. There are far better literary works out there that are worthy of one's attention and investment.

Pratimo završnu godinu srednje škole Ahmada, sina Amerikanke irskog podrijetla i Egipćana.

On je svoj identitet pronašao u lokalnoj džamiji. Put njegove radikalizacije nije jednostavan, već je status quo u kojem se malo toga događa, a previše se opisuje.

John Updike pokušava stvoriti lokalno ozračje u kojemu Ahmad, njegov profesor Levy i još par bliskih osoba žive. Napornim, iako kvalitetnim opisima, ali nažalost koristi previše stereotipa i premalo konkretnih događaja.

To znači da roman možda neće zainteresirati prosječnog čitatelja.

Roman se može promatrati i iz kuta psihološke analize stanja svijesti pojedinca i kritike najvećeg sigurnosnog problema današnjice na Zapadu.

No, i tu Updike ne uspjeva poentirati niti simbolički, a kamoli da se približi sličnim, ali uspješnijim, pisanjima Murakamija ili Pamuka.

Ukratko, roman ima svoje snažne strane u opisivanju, ali nedostaje mu ta specijalna svrha i dublja dubina koja bi ga učinila opravdanom čitanjem za široku publiku.

Who is a terrorist, a bomber? How does one come to renounce one's own life and take others with them? What does one think before taking action? This is what John Updake's book deals with. The story itself is not very significant: it is about a boy with an Egyptian father and an Irish mother who embraces Islam more out of rebellion against his father who abandoned him than out of conviction. He begins to frequent the mosque in his city and is subtly indoctrinated by the imam until he is pushed to sacrifice himself for a "crazy" cause.

However, behind this act there is also a situation of isolation, prejudice, social discomfort, and a complicated family context.

Resolving everything is a school counselor who seems to be the protagonist's alter ego. An apparently very ordinary man, but who will ultimately succeed in the intention of literally saving this boy.

Overall, the reading of the book is quite pleasant, although sometimes a bit too distracting due to the excessive descriptions of details, like in a continuous opening of parentheses that somewhat disrupts the flow of the story.

I had never even heard of this book until I chanced upon it in a book exchange.

Surprisingly, despite being 8 years old, it feels incredibly relevant and timely.

It's a fairly quick read, which is a bonus.

The writing is of a very high standard, with the author approaching the subject matter with a remarkable degree of insight and respect.

In a world where so much writing is dominated by hysteria and outrage, this book stands out.

I was truly impressed by how the author managed to handle the topic in such a thoughtful and engaging way.

Overall, I found it to be a very hopeful book, one that offers a glimmer of optimism in what can often seem like a rather bleak and chaotic world.

It's a book that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a well-written and thought-provoking read.

While Updike may be able to write "well" in the sense that his sentences often flow smoothly and he makes interesting word choices, perhaps even being somewhat lyrical and intuitive or insightful, and the book reads quickly, I absolutely detested this book. It was disappointingly two-dimensional, overly repetitive, and for the most part, extremely boring. It lacked any sort of subtlety. Not to mention, it was highly offensive.

The characters were obnoxious, with most of them being very stereotyped and shallow. There was the fat, depressed wife who ate junk food, watched TV, didn't cook, had an unpleasant smell, and was so obese that she allegedly couldn't have sex. It's clear that this author has a deep-seated hatred for overweight women. There were also the religiously-obsessed Middle Easterners of various origins, most of whom despised women and "Americans," especially American women, despite some of them being American themselves. Then there were the many poor, trashy black people with strange names, most of whom were sexually promiscuous and/or involved in gangs (when there was any significant mention of them at all), with some being pimps or prostitutes. The atheist Jew was slovenly, mediocre at his job, hated being Jewish, and seemed to have a disdain for women despite enjoying their bodies if they met certain physical and ethnic criteria - and quite frankly, he sounded more like a repressed WASP than any Jewish man I've ever known (I myself am Jewish, albeit secular). There were also nasty comments and references about Jews and black people in general. And there was far too much talk about male genitalia and the female equivalent. The author seems to be fixated on all of these things, and not in a positive way. Most of what comes through is contempt and hatred for anyone who isn't a (straight) male.

Adding to all of this, there were sections of the book where the sentences or paragraphs were basically just lists. Instead of mentioning three or four things relevant to the plot or characters at a given point, there would be half a page or even a full page of such lists. And there were sections with Arabic or French quotes or dialogue, sometimes extensive, with most being translated but not all. It all felt like a cheap way to pad the word count.

What a load of rubbish. The writer comes across as a major jerk - sexist, racist, and bigoted WASP - and that's putting it far more politely than I would if I were speaking to someone in person.

Are you familiar with the five times each day that Namaz, Muslim prayers, are called? They are called at sunrise (Fajr), noon (Zuhar), afternoon (Asar), sunset (Maghrib) and bedtime (Isha).

Ahmad Ashmawy is the hero, or antihero, depending on one's viewpoint, of John Updike's 2006 novel Terrorist. Ahmad is an Arab-American finishing high school in the fictional New Jersey suburb of New Prospect. He is a devout Muslim, despite losing his father at age 3 and being raised by an Irish-American mother. His mother is dating Ahmad's guidance counselor, Jack Levy, who has never practiced Judaism. Ahmad is recruited for a major terrorist act in New York City. People Magazine called Terrorist \\"... perhaps the most essential novel to emerge from September 11.\\" If you are surprised that John Updike wrote a novel about a terrorist, you shouldn't be: it's a logical progression of his lifelong fascination with religion and American culture. And perhaps of his interest, as critics have long said, in American decay, whatever one might consider that to be, if it exists.

In Ahmad's requisite senior year session with Mr. Levy, he tells him that his Imam has steered him away from the college track and toward a vocational career, because college teaches too many Godless things. There are Updike characters here who reflect a terrible pessimism that 9/11 engendered in some, very possibly in Updike himself. For example, \\"... Jack comes home depressed... 'It makes you seriously wonder if people deserve to live - if the massacre masterminds in Rwanda and Sudan and Iraq don't have the right idea.'\\"

And Updike reflects on the differences in world views through his characters. \\"The crazy Arabs are right - hedonism, nihilism, that's all we offer.\\"

But there is Updike's wonderfully evocative writing here, too. One scene that comes off beautifully is when Jack's wife Beth is watching her soap operas. Updike bounces random lines from the shows off Beth and listens in as she applies them to her own life. It's very well done. And there is some gorgeous imagery. An airport TSA agent watches the x-rayed metal contents of luggage float by on the video screen: \\"... being slowly hypnotized by the endless procession of ghostly suitcase interiors.... Automobile and house keys fanned like card hands, with their rings and little chains and souvenir gizmos; the unblinking blank stare of wire-frame reading glasses in cloth cases; zippers like the skeletons of miniature snakes; bubble clusters of coins left bunched in pants pockets... the airy chains of eyelets in sneakers and shoes; the tiny metal knobs and cogs in travelling alarm clocks... Small wonder that dangerous weapons again and again waft past eyes glazed by eight hours of deciphering two-dimensional images,... searching for the tumor of malice, the abrupt silhouette of deadly intent...\\"

Reading this novel raised a few questions in my mind about how dramas in literary form actually work. Do all protagonists, even evil ones, become sympathetic characters to the reader? Is that a necessary and desirable by-product of good writing? It certainly seems to work that way in film, and usually in literature as well. Does a novel that wends its way toward the possibility of a world-altering event that we know did not happen in real life negate itself from the outset? Or does it necessarily affect the verity of the book? Or perhaps change the genre of the book? As we are reading, does the close approach of the end of the book, clearly evident by the thinness of the remaining pages, exclude certain plot developments the reader is considering, since it is evident that there is not enough book left for those to occur? Does this confer a dramatic advantage to film, if we were careful not to peek at the film's running length?

This is what happens when my Goodreads app won't load at the library.

I'm sitting in the quiet corner of the library, eager to explore the world of books through my Goodreads app. But to my disappointment, it just won't load.

I try refreshing the page several times, but nothing seems to work. The little spinner keeps spinning, taunting me.

I wonder if it's a problem with the library's Wi-Fi or if there's an issue with the app itself.

Frustrated, I look around at the shelves filled with countless books. Maybe this is a sign that I should put down my device and pick up a real book.

So, I get up and start browsing the shelves. To my surprise, I discover a hidden gem of a book that I might not have found otherwise.

In the end, even though my Goodreads app didn't cooperate, it led me to a new literary adventure right there in the library.

Sad... didn't notice that I read it around the Sept 11th anniversary...

---------

From Publishers Weekly

Ripped from the headlines doesn't even begin to adequately describe Updike's latest work. It is a novelization that follows a somewhat formulaic pattern, based on the news reports of the past five years regarding the perils of homegrown terror. However, it still manages to pack a powerful emotional punch. Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy, an 18-year-old attending Central High School in the working-class city of New Prospect, N.J., in the New York metro area, is the son of an Egyptian exchange student who married a working-class Irish-American girl and then vanished when Ahmad was just three. Disgusted by his mother's inability to get her life in order, Ahmad falls under the influence of Shaikh Rashid, who runs a storefront mosque and preaches about divine retribution for "devils," including the "Zionist dominated federal government." The list of those considered "devils" is extensive. It includes Joryleen Grant, a wayward African-American girl with a kind heart; Tylenol Jones, a tough black guy with whom Ahmad indirectly competes for Joryleen's affections (and for which Ahmad ultimately pays a price); Jack Levy, a 63-year-old Central High guidance counselor who has witnessed enough failure, including his own, to last a lifetime (and whose Jewishness plays a role in a way that was unthinkable before 9/11); Jack's wife, Beth, who is as ineffective and overweight (Updike is unforgiving in his description) as she is oblivious; and Teresa Mulloy, a nurse's aide and Sunday painter who is desperate for Jack's attention when he takes on Ahmad's case, just as Jack is for hers. Updike has distilled all of their flaws into a caustic and crystalline essence. He dwells on their imperfect bodies and the debased world in which they move without mercy and with a dispassionate cruelty that borders on being shocking. Ahmad's revulsion for American culture doesn't seem to bother Updike in the slightest. But Updike has also thoroughly absorbed all of the verbose and often empty talk surrounding the post-9/11 threat of terrorism, and that is the real story here. Mullahs, botched CIA operations, race and class shame (which leads to low self-esteem, vulnerability, and ultimately extremism), half-baked plots that might just work - all of these elements are present and are presented with an elegance that highlights their banality and how very real they could potentially be. Updike is so smooth in guiding his grotesque characters through their various experiences, effortlessly placing them in each other's orbits, that his contempt for them actually enhances rather than detracts from the novel.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

John Updike's new novel is set in a New Jersey mill town that has seen better days. Once a vibrant community populated by energetic white immigrants from Eastern Europe, this city, New Prospect, has now decayed to the point where "those who occupy the inner city now are brown, by and large, in its many shades."

Brown-ness and the discontent associated with it are central themes in the novel, and Updike is acutely attuned to the many different tints and gradations of this color. The novel's main character, 18-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, is at the lighter end of the brown spectrum. He is the product of a brief union between a red-haired Irish-American and "an Egyptian exchange student whose ancestors had been baked since the time of the Pharaohs in the muddy rice and flax fields of the overflowing Nile." Although Ahmad's skin is darker than "the freckled, blotchy pink of his red-haired mother," it is paler than his father's, whose skin is "perfectly matte, like a cloth that's been dipped, olive-beige with a pinch of lampblack in it." In fact, Ahmad's skin color is described as "dun, a low-luster shade lighter than beige."

It seems that the lack of a shiny complexion has contributed significantly to Ahmad's sense of being a misfit, putting him at odds with the world around him. He is "embarrassed by the mismatch" of his dun skin with his mother's freckled pinkness, which "seems unnaturally white, like a leper's." Ahmad himself prefers "darker skins, cocoa and caramel and chocolate," and these preferences are well-suited to his inner-city high school, which is a melting pot of various muddy hues.

At school, Ahmad's attention is frequently drawn to one particular area of brown-ness: Joryleen, an African American with a "smooth body, darker than caramel but paler than chocolate." Although his interest is clearly reciprocated, Ahmad offers Joryleen no encouragement, having been warned by his mentor in Islam that "women are animals easily led." Additionally, Joryleen already has a boyfriend, Tylenol, who is not only a very specific shade of brown - "the color of walnut furniture-stain while it's still sitting up wet on the wood" - but is also a football player and a gymnast. Tylenol has nothing but contempt for Ahmad, saying, "Black Muslims I don't diss, but you not black, you not anything."

In fact, since the age of 11, Ahmad has been a regular at the local mosque. His father, who abandoned the family when Ahmad was a baby, has had no influence on this decision. His mother, a free-thinking Bohemian and an amateur artist, has allowed her son to choose his own path, which has led him into the hands of the mosque's imam, Shaikh Rashid, who is descended from "generations of heavily swathed Yemeni warriors." The heavy swathing has protected the shaikh's ancestors from the kind of intense sun exposure that Ahmad's forefathers endured in Egypt: His complexion is "waxy white."

This skin color may also account for the cadences of Rashid's English, which are curiously similar to those of the predatory Cambridge Arabists of another era. Vaguely effeminate in appearance, he tells Ahmad that he is a "beautiful tutee" and frequently uses endearing terms like "dear boy." Ahmad's speech, on the other hand, has a different but equally curious tone. Although he is a native-born American who has never left the country, he speaks as if he had learned English at a madrassa run by the Taliban. "I of course do not hate all Americans," he says. "But the American way is the way of infidels. It is headed for a terrible doom."

The accent may explain why Ahmad has no friends, despite being intelligent, polite, and good-looking with his "flawless" dun skin. His isolation is complete, and it is the source of his religious and suicidal impulses. When he thinks of God, "alone in all the starry space," he is consumed by a "yearning to join God, to alleviate His loneliness." His naive but deeply felt religiosity makes him an easy target for the cynical Rashid, who steers him towards a terrorist cell planning to blow up the Holland Tunnel. It is left to a teacher at Central High, Jack Levy, a non-observant Jew, to make a last-minute attempt to pull Ahmad back from the brink.

Updike once wrote, "In the strange egalitarian world of the Novel a man must earn our interest by virtue of his... authentic sentiments." Authenticity, in my opinion, is a very high standard for any novelist - mere plausibility would be sufficient. However, there is nothing plausible about the characters in this book: Only two of them, Jack Levy and Ahmad's Irish-American mother, are even remotely believable. Perhaps it is no coincidence that neither of them is brown.

Updike has clearly gone to great lengths to familiarize himself with Islam. He has not only read the Koran carefully but has also delved into academic research on the subject. The novel contains numerous quotations from the Koran in Arabic, complete with all the scholarly trappings of diacritical marks and so on. Yet, the end result is that Updike is unable to free his brown characters from the constraints of texts, scriptures, and ideologies. As for his belief that detailed descriptions of skin color are a form of insight, it is not entirely without merit, as it does sometimes add some liveliness to the prose.

The narrative of Terrorist is constantly interrupted by riffs and diatribes on the state of contemporary America, national security, foreign policy, popular culture, technology, and more. Rashid, Ahmad, and even the secretary of homeland security are given their chance to express their views. However, their tirades are always delivered with a slightly satirical tone, as if none of it really matters. When the terrorists' arguments are responded to at all, it is usually in a register of sardonic and grudging nationalism, by evoking images of a past or future America. No one takes the trouble to defend secular forms of justice or government as part of the modern world's shared heritage. Even more puzzling is the fact that no one makes any claims on behalf of that secular realm of expression that allows for the practice of such arts as fiction itself.

With countless lives at stake, when Jack Levy finds himself faced with the task of giving Ahmad a reason to live and let live, he says: "Hey, come on, we're all Americans here. That's the idea, didn't they tell you that at Central High? Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans; there are even Arab-Americans." Not a word is said about humanity, family, friendship, sport, poetry, love, or laughter.

It is as if a belief in American multiculturalism is the only valid reason for a human being to stay alive. Why, indeed, do the billions of non-Americans who inhabit this Earth refrain from blowing themselves up? I suspect that Updike truly cannot see that they have any good reason not to.

Reviewed by Amitav Ghosh