Updike Terrorist, McMurtry's West, Ali's Portugal: June Fiction

Updike Terrorist, McMurtry's West, Ali's Portugal: June Fiction

(The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Bloomberg.)

By Edward Nawotka

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- John Updike's New Jersey terrorist, Larry McMurtry's latest jaunt in the Old West, Monica Ali in Portugal and a comic look at the future from a Young & Rubicam veteran -- these are some of the fiction highlights this month.

``Terrorist'' by John Updike (Knopf). New Jersey high- school student Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy -- the son of an Irish- American mother and an Egyptian father who abandoned him -- finds the fiery rhetoric of militant Islam soothes his angst- ridden teenage soul and leads him down a nefarious path. While Updike's mostly sympathetic portrayal of the young terrorist isn't wholly convincing, the book's ambitious attempt to embody the past five years of homeland insecurity is gripping nonetheless.

``Lost and Found'' by Carolyn Parkhurst (Little, Brown). Parkhurst's follow-up to her bestselling debut, ``The Dogs of Babel,'' portrays the behind-the-scenes antics at a fictional reality show featuring a coterie of emotionally befuddled contestants in a global scavenger hunt.

``There Will Never Be Another You'' by Carolyn See (Random House). In the near future, the U.S. wages war with an unseen enemy and UCLA dermatologist Phil Fuchs joins a top-secret biological-emergency-response team. His marriage is breaking up while other couples fall in love in this poignant portrait of people who continue to seek happiness despite deep anxiety about the future.

``Telegraph Days'' by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster). The Texan's latest novel depicts the rise and fall of the Old West through the eyes of Marie Antoinette Courtright, an orphan who becomes Buffalo Bill's lover, witnesses the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and, eventually, writes screenplays about it all for MGM.

``Alentejo Blue'' by Monica Ali (Scribner). The Booker Prize-nominated author of ``Brick Lane'' leaves behind London's East End and heads to Portugal for this series of vignettes about the residents of a rural village in decline. They struggle with falling demand for cork, unwelcome tourists and their own apathy.

``Blow the House Down'' by Robert Baer (Crown). Baer, a former CIA agent (the film ``Syriana'' was based on his life), delivers this thriller in which a CIA operative discovers evidence that Iran is cooperating with al-Qaeda to plan a massive terrorist attack against the U.S. -- namely, 9/11.

``Cellophane'' by Marie Arana (Dial). Fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Latin American fiction will enjoy this vivid, bawdy first novel from the editor of the Washington Post Book World, in which Don Victor Sobrevilla starts a paper factory in the Peruvian rain forest and later discovers the formula for cellophane, setting off a series of magical events.

``Londonstani'' by Gautam Malkani (Penguin). This first novel from a Financial Times editor is a raw, foul-mouthed group portrait of four ambitious South Asian ``rudeboys,'' petty criminals who banter in a hip, urban shorthand (``Dey shud save up their aggro 4 Paki bashers, u get me?'') and cruise the streets of London looking for action.

``The Futurist'' by James Othmer (Doubleday). A very funny business satire from a former Young & Rubicam creative director, in which a famous prognosticator founds ``The Coalition of the Clueless'' after he mistakes a deadly riot at a Johannesburg soccer match for a celebration. When a shady organization sends him on a round-the-world trip to find out why much of the world hates America, his eyes open even wider.

``Water for Elephants'' by Sara Gruen (Algonquin). In what may be the sleeper hit of the summer, a young man joins a ragtag traveling circus -- the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth -- during the Great Depression and falls prey to a maniacal ringmaster, a horse-riding ingenue and the charms of a hapless pachyderm.

``A Disorder Peculiar to the Country'' by Ken Kalfus (Ecco). Kalfus, best known for penetrating fiction mostly set in Russia, has written a domestic drama about divorcing Brooklynites who go to war with each other just as the Twin Towers fall. Each thinks the other died in the attack and rejoices -- then the escalation begins.

``The Abortionist's Daughter'' by Elisabeth Hyde (Knopf). A polemical whodunit about the murder of a vocal Colorado abortion doctor. Suspects include the doctor's husband (who is a district attorney), her teenage daughter and a local pro-life minister. Meanwhile, few of the town's residents want to help with the investigation, which is attracting unwelcome national publicity.

``Academy X'' by Andrew Trees (Bloomsbury). In this novel about academic and class one-upmanship in New York City, an English teacher at an elite Manhattan prep school is caught up in a plot to get a rich donor's daughter admitted into Princeton (she's only wait-listed), while at the same time trying to romance the new, not-so-innocent librarian.

``Winkie'' by Clifford Chase (Grove). A quirky political black comedy about an animate teddy bear arrested by the FBI for his association -- i.e., being the much-loved possession of a mad professor with a close resemblance to the Unabomber. An overzealous government prosecutor takes the bear to trial, accusing him of terrorism and calls witnesses to testify against him from the trials of Galileo, Socrates and Oscar Wilde.

``The Whistling Season'' by Ivan Doig (Harcourt). An early- 20th-century saga about how a rural Montana farming community is changed by the presence of the new schoolteacher who blows in from the big city of Minneapolis wielding brass knuckles, and how he adapts to the rugged land he finds there.