Reviews with content warning for Hate crime - The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is so easily consumable. Hamid lovingly crafts the story in such a way that the reader is invested and can follow the concurrent past and present story lines with ease. Changez is an incredibly likable character, and getting to know him, flaws and all, through this personal and confessional narration endears him to the reader. This first half of the novel shows an idealized American experience, often inaccessible to those not among the elite. He is on a whirlwind tour on a shoestring budget, attempting to keep up with his peers who don’t know he’s not wealthy. This hidden self is what draws Jim, the interviewer for Underwood Sampson to him, but it soon becomes apparent that what they want is a total destruction of said hidden self. The goal is to exceed expectations and leave one’s roots behind.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist shows the logical progression of Changez’s idealized view of the United States being systematically dismantled and then inversed. In the second half of the novel, Erica’s dissent into herself, and her subsequent death/disappearance are the realization of Changez’s disillusionment and the total decimation of his access to the American dream. Prior to her breakdown, Erica actss his shield in post-9/11 New York, bringing him into the circles of the upper crust and introducing him to that world in a way in which welcoming him was required. She acts as his credibility within the racist and Islamophobic culture that the US became steeped in. She is the combination of the white picket fence, 2.5 kids, marrying your high school sweetheart American dream, and the new metropolitan, affluent, whirlwind adventure, freedom to create, New York American dream. Changez idolizes her, dreaming of how different his life would be if only a large part of what makes her who she is isn’t there. She is a manic pixie dream girl trope whose destruction serves a purpose for the betterment or as a catalyst for the narrator’s self-reflection.

The American Changez is talking to, being implied to kill him/be there to kill him is dotted throughout the novel in lines that place Changez as looking oblivious at first. While Changez keeps the conversation light and friendly for the most part, he alerts the man that he is seeing and understanding exactly what he is doing with his hourly check ins, hesitance to eat local food, and with the gun in his coat. Changez is not a trained soldier nor a militant dissident, but he is aware of the violence around him and aware of the American reaction to himself and his culture in the climate created after 9/11.

This novel brings modern American imperialism and the American military’s self-imposed role as the world’s police into question through a lens not often considered by American audiences. This over policing and overstepping of other cultures creates a power imbalance. The US is working to impose US-specific democratic ideals onto countries deemed dangerous to continue progressing with their own cultures. Changez did what some American professors do, in being a political resource for their students, inciting change and encouraging them to take action to make change. Sometimes, as it did for Changez when a student he’d met with a few times committed an act of politically motivate violence, it backfires, but in the US, a politically active professor would not be assassinated.

Content Warnings

thayer_m's review against another edition

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reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

tshepiso's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

I knew from the first chapter of The Reluctant Fundamentalist that I probably wasn’t going to enjoy it. The overwrought and alienating second person and blatant misogyny present from the start immediately put a bad taste in my mouth. Unfortunately, the shackles of required reading forced me to continue with this book well after I was ready to toss it into the ocean.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an introspective novella told in the second person from the perspective of a disillusioned Pakistani, Changez to a mysterious American in the streets of Lahore. Changez whisks the reader (unwittingly in my case) to his early twenties and his life as a hopeful post-grad entering the lucrative work of fiscal analysis in New York City. The story explores his relationship with America as a Pakistani migrant through his tumultuous love affair with a former classmate Erica, and his high stakes job in corporate finance.

The most initially off-putting element of this novel was its use of second-person narration. Mohsin Hamid puts the reader into the shoes of a mysterious American man. Through Changez’s probing questions and inference the reader is forced into the position of a stereotypical American patriot in the mid-aughts. This style was likely intentionally disarming and discomfiting and while I can understand why Hamid made the choices he did it doesn’t take away from how alienating doing so made the novel feel. This was a book that felt so specifically written for Bush-era white Americans and as someone so far removed from that perspective, the constant narrow focus on them made this novel feel limited. While having a narrow scope isn’t inherently wrong it did mean there was a distance between me and the narrative that lessened its potential impact.

Even more egregious than the second person was the misogyny dripping from every page of this book. Changez’s relationship with Erica was troubling at best and actively horrifying at its grossest. Changez’s obsession not with being with Erica, but possessing her was abundantly clear from her first scene. Changez misogyny was not subtle; from the way he ogles her body, to his fetishistic view of her mental illness. Being shackled to the perspective of a man who cares so little about the woman he ‘loves’ as a person (with little to no self-reflection of that) was horrifying and every scene about or including Erica was infuriating. I think the most revolting aspect of this part of the book was how Erica’s clinical depression was so often treated as a metaphor or a quirky personality trait. Changez’s complete inability to see Erica as an individual who existed outside of his desire to be with her was maddening. I do have to warn that half-way through this book there is a graphic sex scene that while technically consensual, employs a level of vomit-inducing manipulation that it felt more akin to rape than anything else.

This is a novel that asks a lot of the reader. Hamid’s story is very much up to interpretation and every chapter asks you to question the reliability of the narrator and the purpose of the story. I can see how many find this investigative element engaging and it makes for ripe essay fodder, but I didn’t feel any drive to try and parse meaning from any given line in this story. While trying to find the multiple interpretations of a story may be fun for some, for me it felt trite and pointless.

At this point, I’ve been to several seminars and read various essays about this novel, so I can appreciate the literary merit of Hamid’s work. However, the type of story Hamid was trying to write fundamentally wasn’t for me. I gained very little from reading it. This kind of introspective novel requires a level of personal fulfilment and understanding to be truly enjoyed the work. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any of that.

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