3 out of 4 stars
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Energy Dependence Day is a sprawling crime/police novel which explores life and terrorism in contemporary Saudi Arabia.
The main thrust of the plot involves young people who get involved in a terrorist network. It explores their motivations (both initially and later), the doubts and fears they experience, and the great difficulty they have in extricating themselves once they are in. In the world of the novel, joining (or even being invited to join) a terrorist organization is sort of like getting involved with the Mafia … you’ll never get out alive.
Readers will meet Professor Ratib, who is used as a recruiter by a terrorist organization, and the four young men whose lives he changes forever by recruiting them. We will meet some of the string-pullers behind the professor, including a principled Imam; the Imam’s loyal but cold-hearted enforcer; and an unscrupulous thug who keeps pressuring the Imam to raise more money for the organization. There is also Professor Ratib’s rebellious teenaged daughter Azzah, and her more pious but still spunky friend Kalila. Finally, there is Detective Al-Faruq, who is beginning to wonder why bad things keep happening to people who know the professor.
Like many crime novels, this one starts out slowly and builds until it hits critical mass. The author spends the first half of the book painstakingly laying the groundwork for the series of dramas, shocks, and tragedies that make up the second half. Once the various threads of the plot begin to intertwine, then converge, then in some cases explode, the book becomes a page-turner. The second half of the book is filled with scenes of agonizing tension, painful family crises, moments of well-written horror and even some moments of poignancy.
To get to this payoff, the reader has to work through the first half of the book, which requires careful attention in order to follow it. There are a large number of characters, almost all of them with Arabic names, which because of their unfamiliarity are harder for a non-Arabic-speaking reader to remember. Very little physical description is given of most of the characters, either when they are first introduced or later during dialogues. For example, I went through almost the entire novel imagining Professor Ratib as short and portly, only to find out near the end that he’s actually rather slight.
The book moves back and forth between a number of different subplots, alternating one per chapter. It is hard at first to determine who is the main character that we are supposed to care about. This eventually becomes clear, but it takes more than half the book, and in the meantime there are several false starts. One of the chapters is even written in the first person from one particular character’s point of view, but this does not happen again. Later, we meet this character in the third person.
There is also a subplot involving a Palestinian student living in the United States. This was one of my favorite subplots - poignant and well-written – but I did not see how it was connected to the events in Saudi Arabia, except thematically.
The other great strength of the book is the way its helps readers understand the young men who are recruited. The book does not give the reader the impression that America is actually the Great Satan, but it does help us understand people who feel that way, and it helps us understand what it’s like for those who get trapped in a situation and can’t get out. This is not a disaster/grid-goes-down-in-America novel. It is more about the impact of terrorism on those who perpetrate it. The author spent some time in Saudi Arabia and knows the scene well.
I give Energy Dependence Day three out of four stars. I would recommend it to any reader who has the time and patience to give it some careful attention. If you hang in with the story, it will turn into a great police story.
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Energy Dependence Day
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