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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
"Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard. I am a lover of America ..."
So speaks the mysterious stranger at a Lahore cafe as dusk settles. Invited to join him for tea, you learn his name and what led this speaker of immaculate English to seek you out. For he is more worldly than you might expect; better travelled and better educated. He knows the West better than you do. And as he tells you his story, of how he embraced the Western dream - and a Western woman - and how both betrayed him, so the night darkens. Then the true reason for your meeting becomes abundently clear ...
The jacket blurb for this book is very misleading in suggesting that the narrator (Changez) is betrayed by either the Western dream or a Western woman. This is not a story about betrayal, it's a story about disillusionment and one man's growing disquiet with the way the USA conducts its international relations. And unfortunately, it's not a particularly good story.
The big problem that I had with this book is the narrative style. Hamid uses the first person point of view to tell Changez's story, which works pretty well in the sections where Changez is recounting his adventures in America, but less well when he jumps to the 'present day'. This is because he uses the conceit of a monologue, putting the reader into the role of an unnamed American who Changez has apparently bumped into and is attempting to befriend and it didn't work for me because Hamid constantly has to lever in actions or the reader's imagined responses, which emphasises the artificiality of the device and at times is incredibly clunky. Far from feeling integrated into the story, I often resented the role that Hamid was trying to force on me, which undermined the tension of those scenes.
Much of the book is taken up with Changez's account of how he came to work for a capitalist company (one that works out the value of a business and where cost cuts can be made). Interspersed with this is his obsession with a damaged US woman, Erica, who has never got over the death of her boyfriend at a young age but who Changez nevertheless feels drawn to. Hamid wants the reader to tie Changez's gradual realisation that he and Erica can never have the relationship that he wants, with his troubled contemplation of how he makes his living and the impact he has on the lives of others, all set against the backdrop of 9/11. It doesn't work is because whilst Changez comes across as very self-analytical in looking at his relationship with Erica, he doesn't display the same analysis to his job, with the result that his view of American businesses and the US military feels superficial and glib. Yes, the two cause damage and rip apart people's lives, but there's no insight to this other than a description of what they do. I really wanted to see more of how this affected Changez than his rebellious need to grow a beard and be more overtly Muslim. There's no real hint at how he comes around to fundamantalist thinking - his return to Pakistan and his adoption of a teaching job is described in such benign terms that it's difficult to take him seriously as a potential threat to anyone.
Erica should be a sympathetic character, but her privileged background and self-indulgence work against it. She's shown to have written a novella, a form that she says: "leaves space for your thoughts to echo", in what seems to be a nod from Hamid as to the slight nature of this tale. Far from making my thoughts echo however, my thoughts wandered as I questioned whether Changez would ever get to the point. He doesn't.
Finally, Hamid leaves the tale with an open-ending that readers are going to either love or hate. For me, it felt like a gimmick and one that doesn't really work with what's gone on before. I'm not adverse to seeing open-endings in books, but when the preceding events have lacked depth and substance, you have to question why they're being used. In this case, I felt it was to try and give the book a dramatic tension that it had not earned.
The Verdict:
Far too slight and incredibly superficial. I felt that this didn't really have anything of interest to say about Muslims living in the West and the open-ending feels like a cheap device aimed at creating a tension that has not been earned.
So speaks the mysterious stranger at a Lahore cafe as dusk settles. Invited to join him for tea, you learn his name and what led this speaker of immaculate English to seek you out. For he is more worldly than you might expect; better travelled and better educated. He knows the West better than you do. And as he tells you his story, of how he embraced the Western dream - and a Western woman - and how both betrayed him, so the night darkens. Then the true reason for your meeting becomes abundently clear ...
The jacket blurb for this book is very misleading in suggesting that the narrator (Changez) is betrayed by either the Western dream or a Western woman. This is not a story about betrayal, it's a story about disillusionment and one man's growing disquiet with the way the USA conducts its international relations. And unfortunately, it's not a particularly good story.
The big problem that I had with this book is the narrative style. Hamid uses the first person point of view to tell Changez's story, which works pretty well in the sections where Changez is recounting his adventures in America, but less well when he jumps to the 'present day'. This is because he uses the conceit of a monologue, putting the reader into the role of an unnamed American who Changez has apparently bumped into and is attempting to befriend and it didn't work for me because Hamid constantly has to lever in actions or the reader's imagined responses, which emphasises the artificiality of the device and at times is incredibly clunky. Far from feeling integrated into the story, I often resented the role that Hamid was trying to force on me, which undermined the tension of those scenes.
Much of the book is taken up with Changez's account of how he came to work for a capitalist company (one that works out the value of a business and where cost cuts can be made). Interspersed with this is his obsession with a damaged US woman, Erica, who has never got over the death of her boyfriend at a young age but who Changez nevertheless feels drawn to. Hamid wants the reader to tie Changez's gradual realisation that he and Erica can never have the relationship that he wants, with his troubled contemplation of how he makes his living and the impact he has on the lives of others, all set against the backdrop of 9/11. It doesn't work is because whilst Changez comes across as very self-analytical in looking at his relationship with Erica, he doesn't display the same analysis to his job, with the result that his view of American businesses and the US military feels superficial and glib. Yes, the two cause damage and rip apart people's lives, but there's no insight to this other than a description of what they do. I really wanted to see more of how this affected Changez than his rebellious need to grow a beard and be more overtly Muslim. There's no real hint at how he comes around to fundamantalist thinking - his return to Pakistan and his adoption of a teaching job is described in such benign terms that it's difficult to take him seriously as a potential threat to anyone.
Erica should be a sympathetic character, but her privileged background and self-indulgence work against it. She's shown to have written a novella, a form that she says: "leaves space for your thoughts to echo", in what seems to be a nod from Hamid as to the slight nature of this tale. Far from making my thoughts echo however, my thoughts wandered as I questioned whether Changez would ever get to the point. He doesn't.
Finally, Hamid leaves the tale with an open-ending that readers are going to either love or hate. For me, it felt like a gimmick and one that doesn't really work with what's gone on before. I'm not adverse to seeing open-endings in books, but when the preceding events have lacked depth and substance, you have to question why they're being used. In this case, I felt it was to try and give the book a dramatic tension that it had not earned.
The Verdict:
Far too slight and incredibly superficial. I felt that this didn't really have anything of interest to say about Muslims living in the West and the open-ending feels like a cheap device aimed at creating a tension that has not been earned.
