Book Review 2

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan

I have to start by acknowledging that I was the one who suggested that we read this book for book club, supported by one of the other members who had already read it.

While it is not my least favourite book read yet (that would have to be Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard) it did not really appeal to me all that much.

The premise of the story is that a pole dancer gets mistaken for a terrorist and becomes a target for media and community lynching. An unlikely premise and therefore a difficult one to sustain. I feel that Flanagan was just trying too hard to be clever. His criticism of society was just too obvious - especially as he started with a dedication to David Hicks.

The main character, the pole dancer nicknamed The Doll is a shallow, self-centred caricature whose main aim in life is to make enough money to cover her naked body in hundred dollar notes. Her development into a more thoughtful and compassionate human being by the end of the book is entirely unbelievable. The other characters are equally shallow and unlikeable.

This book is full of unlikely coincidences and cliches. I could easily have stopped reading at any point as the ending was so inevitable, in fact it was only that I was reading it for book club that I kept going.

This is the first of Flanagan's books that I have finished. I tried to read Gould's Book of Fish but couldn't get further than the first hundred pages. I have heard that The Sound of One Hand Clapping is good but I don't know that I'd bother.