TERRORIST

Terrorist is John Updike’s 22nd novel. We bumped into him at Book Expo a couple of weeks ago and said: “Hello, John, we started reading your new book Terriorist.” He said: “Good, be sure and finish it though!” We’re following his advice.

NY Times interview with Updike:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/books/31updi.html

A New York Magazine review of Terrorist:http://newyorkmetro.com/arts/books/reviews/17120/

A John Updike website with all sorts of stuff on it:http://userpages.prexar.com/joyerkes/index.html

It is on sale tues, 6/6/06. Stop by the store and have a look. Here is the book cover and a short summary.

Devils , Ahmad thinks. These devils seek to take away my God. All day long, at Central High School, girls sway and sneer and expose their soft bodies and alluring hair. Their bare bellies, adorned with shining navel studs and low-down purple tattoos, ask, What else is there to see ? Boys strut and saunter along and look dead-eyed, indicating with their edgy killer gestures and careless scornful laughs that this world is all there is — a noisy varnished hall lined with metal lockers and having at its end a blank wall desecrated by graffiti and roller-painted over so often it feels to be coming closer by millimeters.
The teachers, weak Christians and nonobservant Jews, make a show of teaching virtue and righteous self-restraint, but their shifty eyes and hollow voices betray their lack of belief. . . . Some have the pink lids and bad breaths and puffy bodies of those who habitually drink too much. . . . Their lives away from the school are disorderly and wanton and self-ingulgent.