TERRORIST

　　Starred Review. Ripped from the headlines doesn't begin todescribe Updike's latest, a by-the-numbers novelization of the lastfive years' news reports on the dangers of home-grown terror thatpacks a gut punch. Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy is 18 and attends CentralHigh School in the New York metro area working class city of NewProspect, N.J. He is the son of an Egyptian exchange student whomarried a working-class Irish-American girl and then disappearedwhen Ahmad was three. Ahmad, disgusted by his mother's inability toget it together, is in the thrall of Shaikh Rashid, who runs astorefront mosque and preaches divine retribution for "devils,"including the "Zionist dominated federal government." The list ofdevils is long: it includes Joryleen Grant, the waywardAfrican-American girl with a heart of gold; Tylenol Jones, a blacktough guy with whom Ahmad obliquely competes for Joryleen'sattentions (which Ahmad eventually pays for); Jack Levy, a CentralHigh guidance counselor who at 63 has seen enough failure,including his own, to last him a lifetime (and whose Jewishnessplays a part in a manner unthinkable before 9/11); Jack's wife,Beth, as ineffectual and overweight (Updike is merciless on this)as she is oblivious; and Teresa Mulloy, a nurse's aide and Sundaypainter as desperate for Jack's attention, when he takes on Ahmad'scase, as Jack is for hers. Updike has distilled all their flaws toa caustic, crystalline essence; he dwells on their poor bodies andthe debased world in which they move unrelentingly, and with adispassionate cruelty that verges on shocking. Ahmad's revulsionfor American culture doesn't seem to displease Updike one iota. ButUpdike has also thoroughly digested all of the discursive papsurrounding the post-9/11 threat of terrorism, and that is the realstory here. Mullahs, botched CIA gambits, race and class shame(that leads to poor self-worth that leads to vulnerability thatleads to extremism), half-baked plots that just might work-all arehere, and dispatched with an elegance that highlights theirbanality and how very real they may be. So smooth is Updike inputting his grotesques through their paces-effortlessly puttingthem in each others' orbits-that his contempt for them enhancesrather than spoils the novel.
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