Austinist Review: Terrorist by John Updike

The book chronicles Ahmad’s senior year as he tries to steer clear of the things that most teenagers are usually into (like sex and consumerism). He rebuffs his guidance counselor’s attempts to convince him to continue his schooling and decides instead to become a commercial truck driver. He doesn’t seem to have any friends while he’s in school, although he does manage to play some team sports and develops a love–hate relationship with a hussy in his class. His only other relationship is his so-called friendship with his boss, to whom Ahmad seems subservient and eager to please well beyond the normal ass-kissing we all do with our bosses. (Oh please, you do it, too.)

Meanwhile, Ahmad’s mom is schtupping Ahmad’s guidance counselor, while Ahmad is studying the Koran and becoming more and more entrenched in Islamic culture and beliefs. In fact, he is actively being groomed as—yes, you guessed it—a terrorist. It appears that Updike’s intent was to explain by illustration the way in which religious fundamentalism can be so insidiously pervasive as to cause a person not only to decide, but also to desire, to make the ultimate sacrifice of his life in the name of jihad.

But Updike’s illustration is entirely unconvincing and doesn’t explain much. We never felt engaged in the story, nor did we find any of the characters or their plights to be particularly believable, much less sympathetic. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Ahmad’s choosing to be religious in a way his mother and his peers aren’t, but the book gives us no sense of how he got there; thus, it doesn’t seem to make sense or ring true. Not only that, but Ahmad takes his religious beliefs to an extreme level and seems to automatically soak up his proposed role as a terrorist without so much as a lingering doubt, let alone any kind of deep soul searching. He comes across more as an automaton than a human. And who really wants to read about automatons on the beach?

We don’t want to ruin the end for you in the event that you do decide to disregard our review and read this book, so we’ll just say that another thing that really bugged us was the preposterous series of coincidences that converged at the end of the story. I’m sorry, Mr. Updike, but we just didn’t buy it. We did, however, really like the Rabbit series and we sincerely hope your 23rd novel will be better.