The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

[Bob Randell]

This is a national bestseller, which I read for a book club. It is an easy read, only about 200 pages of fairly large type.

It is about a Pakistani man who is telling his life story to a mysterious American in a Lahore cafe. About how he came to America to attend Princeton and how he became infatuated with New York and the wealthy American lifestyle. Then came 9/11 and everything changed.

This was the basics of the book and from it I was interested to read it. I expected something truly enlightening and controversial. I expected to learn all about Pakistan, its people and customs and to have my world views stood on end and to come away either appalled or impressed. None of that happened.

The book is really three separate stories. The story of the mysterious American and the cafe discussion, and the story of the young man in America do have a common point but they are each written in dramatically different styles. The Cafe portions reminding me of the light-hearted opening scenes of the Disney movie Aladdin where the merchant is speaking to the audience. The story of the young man's life however was in straight, serious prose.

But there is another story and it is half the novel. It is a romance between the main character and an American woman. The truly strange thing is that this story has nothing at all to do with the other two. It could have been snipped out without effecting the other stories at all. As a result it feels very tacked on and useless, but could have perhaps been a successful novel by itself.

The main failing, I felt, was that the book did not go much beyond revealing that there are people in the world who don't live in the US that have different opinions of the US and its policies. There was almost no mention of religion, not attempt to point out American atrocities, no insight or meaty information about life in Pakistan, nothing even slightly controversial or surprising. It was a very polite, very dull novel, who's bulk really was a not so good love story.

When I finished I thought, well that was a let down, but it was at least a quick read, and I did like the cafe portions of the story and wished there was more of that in it. Then I noticed that in the back were several pages listed as: Questions for Discussion.

I couldn't believe it. They actually printed discussion questions in the back of the novel. How pretentious was that? To assume the book was even worth discussing in the first place! And it isn't.

I thought it was written well enough, it just isn't that interesting of a story. I would rate this one as just below average.