As usual, I'm way behind the times. This powerful and still most timely book was published in 2006, and it came to my attention by pure chance, as I searched through my shelves to see what could be donated to the local library. Here was one, I thought, that looked interesting, and set it aside to read. I have no idea how it reached me in the first place.It took only a few pages for me to recognize that Richard Flanagan is an exceptional writer. True, he writes about Australia in an unmistakably Australian accent (how do we hear accents when we hear no spoken words?) but it takes little imagination to transpose the post-9/11 Australia he writes about to America today. The social environment of Sydney in The Unknown Terrorist is a world governed by fear and greed, by paranoia, glittery materialism, and media hype. It's a world in which "success" and wealth abound, as do the poverty and self-destructive ignorance of the exploited underclass. Flanagan describes it all with a gritty realism that deteriorates, slowly, inevitably, toward the end of the book, into madness and nightmare. We are swept along by a prose that is rhythmic, unadorned, compelling--I'd almost say hypnotic.Let me call it tragedy. The Doll, the protagonist of this downward spiral into madness, is a pole dancer, a "westie" (i.e., from the wrong side of the tracks), the product of a dysfunctional family, and now the innocent lamb in the social slaughterhouse. She is sucked, naively--and, yes, innocently--into a vortex that is not of her own making, swept down with increasing speed and inevitability into its dark inner core. It starts with a spontaneous--and, yes, innocent enough--one-night stand with a charmer of Middle Eastern origin, who vanishes the next day and is (wrongly) identified as a terrorist at a moment when Sydney is experiencing a minor terrorist scare. A security camera photograph of the two of them in an (innocent!) embrace is used to identify The Doll as the "unknown terrorist," and she becomes the target of a media witch hunt, led by a sleazy, has-been, and vindictive TV journalist whose attentions she once spurned.Soon abandoned by all but a single friend whose loyalty, too, is soon tested, she sinks ever deeper into the mire of a society run amok with hyped-up, irrational fear and racial animosity. She relives the traumas of her past life even as she struggles to cope with those of the present moment, in flight from the media, the cops, the terrorism "experts", the corrupt politicians--all those who see in her a convenient scapegoat for their failure to address their rapidly unraveling world with reason or integrity. There are signs, everywhere, of erupting rage and violence. People everywhere, on the streets and in the bastions of privilege and power, resort to callousness and cruelty. The social fabric disintegrates into chaos.All of which might seem bleak, and Flanagan does not spare his readers. He is capable of the most cynical of observations about his characters and their actions, of biting satire and mocking rage against the injustices and abuses that abound in a me-first society, in which the powerful take advantage of the powerless and the powerless are left to look after themselves. What saves him--and us, as readers--is his compassion for his characters. He shows us, convincingly, the confusion of their inner lives, the conflicts between reason and emotion, the inconsistency and the irrationality of their humanity, the sudden, uncontrollable flow between hatred and love.I use the word tragedy advisedly. Tragedy, as I see it, is characterized primarily by the notion of inevitability. Call it fate, though it's really not fate at all, it's the result of very human action, very human interaction. Someone does something, innocently, perhaps. And this one thing leads inevitably to another. Tensions and conflicts build. Delusions formulate and gel, and the whole toxic mix continues to ferment in its own fetid juices, until the explosion is inevitable. The carefully plotted thread of Flanagan's story has that sense of inevitability. It could not have turned out any other way. And the end of his story is, despite its violence, strangely cathartic. We are left with the sense that what had to happen, happened; and, more importantly, with the sense of satisfying release that justice--even strange, even arbitrary-seeming justice--brings along with it.Read this book: you'll love The Doll, as I did. You'll want to save her, as did I. But will you be able to? It's the suspense that carries you along until the very last page...
Although it is very different in tone and style and subject matter, my experience reading this book reminded me a little of how I recently felt reading "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England". The narrator of that book did one stupid thing after another and the reader was supposed to accept these actions as reasonable because the character is described/definned as a bumbler. In real life of course people do not fall quite so neatly into such categories. Someone may bumble most of the time in certain areas but navigate smoothly through other sets of circumstances. As Chris Rock noted in one of his comedy routines when describing his political leanings - "I have some things that I'm conservative about, and some things that I'm liberal about". Nobody is always liberal or always conservative or always a bumbler, though it is true that some people act a certain way far more often than not. The "title" character of The Unknown Terrorist is a fairly complex one with a well fleshed out background, and the storyline is fueled by much bigger ideas than the comical Arsonist book. But I couldn't shake the feeling as I sped through its pages that the actions of pivotal characters were specifically intended to promote strong opinions held by the author and nothing but. He wanted to make certain points about politics and the media and about how easily the sheep like masses can be led to a prefabricated conclusion. If at any point one of the major characters in this reasonably but not overwhelmingly well written book behaved in a way that I personally believe would have been more realistic reactions/responses, the book would completely fall apart because little else was holding it in place. The wrongfully accused woman needs to be so paranoid from the get go (her drug use helped in this regard, I suppose) and distrustful of authority that the only thing she can think to do is run and hide even before she's really being chased. The decision makers in the media need to be so obsessed about breaking a big story that not only does truth become irrelevant, but so does having supporting evidence of any kind. The author is OBVIOUSLY cynical about our post 9/11 world, and anyone who does not have their head shoved deeply in the sand can recognize why this might be so, but I found myself torn between wanting to follow the storyline to where it was blatantly leading and wanting the characters to break free of the author's plot machinations and act in a common sense manner that would likely clear matters up within a few pages of text. Despite such frustration with plausibility, this was definitely a gripping and smooth flowing read.
What do You think about The Unknown Terrorist (2007)?
Judy wrote: "this book was so bad, that I have never read one more thing by Richard Flannigan....."Oh no, no, no! Trust me, everything else he's written is wonderful.
—Lisa
This is an interesting idea, considering the 'age of terror' which we're currently living in. Gina Davies, also known as 'the Doll' and 'Krystal' is a pole dancer in Sydney who is saving her money to go to university and have a career which she can be proud of. The night after she has a one night stand with a stranger she sees a photograph of herself and the stranger on a news report, linking them to unexploded bombs found at Homebush stadium. Her reluctance to go straight to the police proves to be her downfall as Sydney is put on high terror alert and the search for 'the unknown terrorist,' as she is dubbed, intensifies. The media paints an inaccurate picture of her, which only adds to the public's paranoia.Once this book really kicked into gear, after about 100 pages or so, I found it hard to put down. It was entertaining and fast paced, but not so much that it skimped on important details. The writer clearly had a political agenda, dedicating the book to David Hicks who has proven to not be as innocent as the Doll. He also criticises the ASIO Act directly, by including an arrogant ASIO officer who boasts about what the amendments to the Act allow him to do. I thought that this could have been done more subtly. It seemed to break the momentum of the book to throw in a two dimensional character who only exists to slam the amendments. Its obvious that the purpose of this book is to scare the public into believing that this could happen to them under the ASIO Act, and while I disagree with the author's claims, I still found this to be very entertaining and well written as a work of fiction. I'm curious about reading Flanagan's other books now.
—Katie
Flanagan states the thesis of this novel--for it is a novel in service of an idea--right up front: "The idea that love is not enough is a particularly painful one. In the face of its truth, humanity has for centuries tried to discover in itself evidence that love is the greatest force on earth."I thought The Unknown Terrorist was terrific, but not at first. It was more than just well-written. Flanagan is a dynamite writer, but it seemed to me it was all set up perfectly and it was clear what would happen. True enough. Then about half way through, having left the book idle for weeks on the bedstand, I picked it up again and suddenly couldn't stop. True enough it played out as I expected (and it turns out Flanagan says he took the plot from The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll) but the text and the commentary on trust and truth and love in our culture was phenomenal. Far more powerful than any political tract.The main character is "the Doll" or "Krystal", a pole dancer at a gentleman's club called The Chairman's Lounge in Sydney. Her real name is Gina Davies. She's in her 20ies, living a completely materialistic life dressed in designer clothes, eschewing banks and stashing cash to the amount of nearly $50,000 for a down payment on a apartment. She's chosen to exploit her body because she can make real money and buy some respect--more than she got of either at a call center. One night she meets the handsome Tariq at a Carnival and spends an passionate night with him. At the same time Richard Cody, aging TV anchorman in danger of being eclipsed, recognizes her in a surveillance photo with Tariq who's become a suspect in a failed stadium bombing that has scared the population and made it necessary for the perpetrator to be caught and punished. Cody recognizes her because she snubbed him outside The Chairman's Lounge. As security and news and government personnel seek to find the would-be terrorist, they latch onto Tariq largely because he's disappeared, though they later find he's been in and out of Pakistan (where he has relatives and where he's gone to collect drugs). Richard Cody identifies Gina in the photo and decides to consider her an "accomplice" to the "terrorist". As the authorities pull out all the stops to find her, Cody plans a TV exclusive that will show the government at work to catch the dangerous terrorists--and fast. He ignores the possibility that Gina--and even Tariq--might be innocent. When Tariq's body turns up in a trunk, Gina becomes "the terrorist" and a likely murderer as well. By that time the government, the security services, and Cody and his TV network have too much at stake to care about the truth. After all a programmer cum low-level drug dealer and a pole dancer are just the sorts you want to accuse of being "homegrown terrorists" if you have to accuse anyone--and of course they do in order to ally public fears and remain in control.As she flees, the reader learns more and more about Gina, both why her background makes her the perfect "fall guy" and why she is afraid to try and clear her name by going to the police.I've read two others by Flanagan: Gould's Book of Fish and Wanting, both of which I liked and both of which were rich in the kind of cultural observation that really makes sense to me, but neither with the sheer power and single-mindedness of this one. I'm not saying that makes it a better novel, but it makes it maybe the best political argument I've read in a long time. I will recommend that everyone read it.
—Susan
