The Good Son

by Michael Gruber

New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber, a member of "the elite ranks of those who can both chill the blood and challenge the mind" (The Denver Post), delivers a taut, multilayered, riveting novel of suspense

Somewhere in Pakistan, Sonia Laghari and eight fellow members of a symposium on peace are being held captive by armed terrorists. Sonia, a deeply religious woman as well as a Jungian psychologist, has become the de facto leader of the kidnapped group. While her son Theo, an ex-Delta soldier, uses his military connections to find and free the victims, Sonia tries to keep them all alive by working her way into the kidnappers' psyches and interpreting their dreams. With her knowledge of their language, her familiarity with their religion, and her Jungian training, Sonia confounds her captors with her insights and beliefs. Meanwhile, when the kidnappers decide to kill their captives, one by one, in retaliation for perceived crimes against their country, Theo races against the clock to try and save their lives.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Pakistan

400 pages, Hardcover

First published December 24, 2009

About the author

Michael Gruber is an author living in Seattle, Washington. He attended Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami. He worked as a cook, a marine biologist, a speech writer, a policy advisor for the Jimmy Carter White House, and a bureaucrat for the EPA before becoming a novelist.

He is generally acknowledged to be the ghostwriter of the popular Robert K. Tanenbaum series of Butch Karp novels starting with No Lesser Plea and ending with Resolved. After the partnership with Tanenbaum ended, Gruber began publishing his own novels under William Morrow and HarperCollins.

Gruber's "Jimmy Paz" trilogy, while critically acclaimed, did not sell at the same levels as the Butch Karp series in the United States. The Book of Air and Shadows became a national bestseller shortly after its release in March of 2007, however.

Series:
* Jimmy Paz

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a pleasant surprise. You pick up a book expecting a political thriller and get not only that but a novel of ideas. I thrilled to the action scenes, sure, but I was more taken with the philosophical angles on, of all things, jihad.

That's right, that oxymoron of oxymorons -- "holy war"! Gruber sets it all up with an unusual confluence of Americans and Pakistanis, chiefly the American mother, Sonia Bailey Laghari, and her (good) American-Pakistani son, a professional killer with a conscience, Theo Bailey (a.k.a. Kakay Ghazan).

Sonia's character is easily one of the more arresting ones I've come across. She comes of a circus background, wed a timid but intellectual Pakistani lawyer, and, as an outsider who observed and learned the culture around her, raised her son in some interesting circumstances (read: a foreign country in every way). Theo kills his first man at age 9, and so it goes. There is, after all, a bit of the Wild West to Pakistan, and Gruber captures it perfectly.

The book jump starts when Sonia, now living in America, leads an international team of academics back to Pakistan for a peace conference that gets ambushed by terrorists en route to its meeting spot. As it turns out, Sonia is more than the terrorists bargained for, as she is able to exploit tribal rivalries through her knowledge of Islam and Pashtun culture. She also takes advantage of the Pakistanis' fascination with dreams, using her Jungian interpretation background, kneading it heavily with her Muslim background, and coming up with interpretations that both fascinate and enrage her captors. Stockholm Syndrome? Sometimes it looks like West Bank Syndrome, the way her words fire up her audience.

What does this mean for the reader? It means an education in a place you least expect it -- a novel. Truly, you will learn more about Islam and the Muslim way of life than you ever expected -- its history, its poetry, its rituals, its prejudices, its joys, its warts, and its inconsistencies. If only all terrorists could read it! If only the President of the United States could read it! (Sonia, you see, is equally critical of the U.S. and its often thuggish and futile foreign adventures.)

The ending is a bit rushed and gets a bit cute as the alternating point-of-view chapters converge in unexpected ways, but for almost the entire novel, Gruber holds together the suspense, the fascination, and the education. Yes, the conference is never held due to the ambush, but in fact it is. It is held by the book. Just not as expected.

Now that I've built up your expectations, perhaps you won't enjoy it as much as I did or be as surprised. But really, as a citizen of the post 9/11 world, you should read it. It will open your eyes. Then share it with a Muslim friend -- and an Onward Christian Soldier one, too. There's enough food for thought to feed an army -- any army.

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book review

"I learned more about the jihadist mindset in these pages—and in an entertaining way—than in all the cable-TV punditry I've seen since 9/11. Cerebral, emotional, heartfelt, this one's the complete package. President Obama, if you happen to come across this column, read this book." - Stephen King (from his #1 selection: The Best Books I Read in 2012)

Michael Gruber has done it again. As always, he has confounded this reader with his superlative mind. Moving from a shocking Shakespearean secret concealed for over 400 years to an art forger who thinks he is the incarnation of Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez; from a Latin detective in Miami who is an unbeliever in the face of Santeria and voodoo to a gentle professor who travels into a nest of Mexican drug cartels intending to die; to this book, The Good son in which Michael pits Jungian therapy against the mindset of Pashtun mullahs in Pakistan: indeed, Micheal never writes the same book twice. (the latter being a possible Jungian neurological psychotic response to having done just that: write a story many times over for another author).


Carl Jung

The sheer complexity of a Gruber novel makes it difficult to write a review. Believe me, I've written a few. In the interest of potential readers who may come to reading this, let me humbly anticipate some reactions that may help with your decision to read this, or not. In general, the story takes place in Washington D.C. and the Pakistani portion of the Grand Trunk Road and is told from the point of view of Theo (the son), Cynthia (NSA translator) and Sonia (the mother) with a captivating convergence towards the end of the novel.


Grand Trunk Road

To the reader of thrillers - You will read a story about a son, of Pashtun descent, serving in an American top secret military organization who learns his mother is being held captive by Jihadist somewhere within the region in which he grew up. You will read a story about a nuclear threat years in the making. You will read about CIA plots and ambitious NSA bureaucrats and translators. Michael never forgets to write a great story line. A cautionary note: thriller readers may object to lengthy passages that take them into the minds of the jihadist and the essence of Jungian therapy and question some of the events as being plausible.

To the readers of Western literature - You can enjoy a great story line and not feel guilty about it (I say this with a certain sense of humor). The ethnographic study of the Jihad, the Pashtun mindset and the placement of captives carefully chosen by Gruber as to their background (Jungian therapist, Catholic priest, western billionaire, a Muslim peace organizer, etc.) will have you rooted to the prose and especially for Westerners duly enlighten you as to why Iraq, Afghanistan, and other American global conflicts involving the Muslim world have utterly failed.

You will be treated by Urdu poetry culled from the region.

"From the instant of the heart's creation
the body has been tinder
so fell this spark
the mantle burst into flames
now like the light of the full moon
the fire has spread all over me"

You will begin to understand the root of terrorism: and it is not their religion. To the jihadist, Westernization is to be fought. To the jihadist it's about once again ruling the planet via the modesty of women:

MR. ALAKAZAI: I have the greatest respect for women. A modest woman caring for her family is one of God's greatest creations. But it is obvious that when the head is full the womb is empty, as we observe throughout the West. Not a single one of the so-called advanced countries is reproducing its original population at replacement levels [because of educated women]. Virtually all the population growth is with Muslim women throughout the world and it is clear to us that in a certain number of years all these nations will have Muslim majorities."

Sonia, our Jungian therapist, a Muslim, and captive of Alakazai puts it like this:

SONIA: "And please don't tell me you're not afraid of women, Mr. Alakazai. Sexual terror is the motor of your entire movement. That's why you blow up girls' schools and toss acid in the faces of their students."


Pashtun girl

Or, for the captive in possible peril of being beheaded, it's like this:

ASHTON: "The Qur'an is not notably against women, not even as much as the Bible. So, I must conclude that the oppression of women is not a by-product of the jihad movement but its purpose. What drives you to murder and suicide is not the love of God but the fear of women, of educated women, of women released from the absolute domination of men. Because women are a true mirror. They are more sensible than you are, they want their children to flourish, and if they were free they would look at you all, and ask, 'O believers, why so poor, why so ignorant, why so despised by the world?' And they would despise you too. You fight to prevent this, you fight to preserve not the modesty but the stupidity of women, and where you succeed these stupid women produce even stupider sons - yourselves - and if there were a God he would be laughing in all your faces."

To the readers who favor philosophical discourse - This is an ethnographic study tantalizing in its comparison between the Western and Eastern mindset. Michael investigates ethics in particular as that relates to Eastern tribalism vs. Western individuation. As Sonia is forced to choose the next victim of a beheading from among the group of captives of which she is one, a great discourse takes place as that relates to the motives of their jihadist captors and a possible way out of their precarious position: namely, Sonia's worming her way into the psyche of her captors via the Jungian interpretation of their dreams.

SONIA: "It's a Western delusion that all psychological problems are reducible to restrictions on individual freedom. In other cultures, including the one we're talking about, the highest value is not freedom at all. It's harmony within the family and the tribe and the sense that the person is doing the right thing with respect to tradition. In the West, that means reducing interior conflict. In the Muslim world, it means reducing exterior conflicts."

Or as Theo, a Pashtun and American covert operative, ruminates on the conflicting ethics of East vs. West:

...the whole country was bribed to the nipples, every public office was for sale, but what could you do? There was no Afghanistan the way there was a France or a Canada, there were only individuals and families and clans, and the Americans trying to make it different was like assembling a fighter plane out of wet toilet paper. Not making emotional waves is like the ruling passion of American life. The Americans see it as lying, as bad faith, but we think that the protection of honor, of the family, of the clan, is worth more than any mere veracity.

As with all of Michael Gruber's books the author presents his readers with a gripping tale. The Good Son is a Kane and Abel-like story of two sons caught up between the West and the East; it is a story of American ambitions within its clandestine organizations; of a small group of captives employing a unique solution to their own freedom as that takes place near Pakistan's Grand Trunk Road; and all of it revolves around our fabulously complicated and subversive mother: Sonia Bailey.

I highly recommend this book, given the cautionary tale to the various types of readers above.


-----------------------------------------------
About the author


Michael Gruber

Are you a little bored with the conventional thriller but do you still get your entertainment from books, and are you the sort of reader that might read literary fiction but is often frustrated by the lack of a good "yarn" in such novels? Are you totally incensed at having to live in the "Cult of In-between" where your desire for the standards of literature that harbor questions posed in a serious way - questions surrounding the human condition - is in constant conflict with your craving for a good yarn; sadly consigned almost exclusively to thrillers that are formulaic and written in dull prose?

Michael Gruber shares your sensibilities. It's not that he harbors the inability to write popular fiction. He's actually quite good at it. He is generally acknowledged to be the ghostwriter of the popular Robert K. Tanenbaum series of Butch Karp novels starting with No Lesser Plea and ending with Resolve. That partnership ended when Gruber realized that writing the same book over and over was boring. And as Gruber says:

I'm not exactly bitching, had I stayed with that job I might be a Patricia Cornwell or a Clive Cussler by now, with seven-figure advances and the rest of that kind of life. On the subject of cults in fiction he clarifies the issue and defines it "as a writer with a relatively small number of passionately devoted fans, who never quite breaks into mass-market popularity."

And it's true: since then, Michael Gruber has not written the same book twice. Otherness is a word Gruber frequently uses to describe the Cult of In-between. Having discarded popular fiction and with it its millions of followers and since "I don't do cute, and there goes another 70 million readers..." it seems to Gruber that he will never attain the sales of some of his fellow authors (though he once did arrive on the NYT best seller list). Perhaps with a movie this might change as there are cases where a cult readership arrives at popular readership via the exposure of a novel onto the silver screen.

The novel, THE RETURN, (out since early September) would be an ideal vehicle for a couple of older male stars, and there's a nice ingenue role there as well. We shall see. I am pretty content with the cult as is, although I guess I could learn to like being fabulously wealthy too.
;
Gruber's life reads like that of a Renaissance man. Born in NYC and a graduate of the public school system he earned a BA in English literature and after working for various small magazines in NY, he went back to City College and obtained a second BA degree in biology. Even that wasn't enough, following this he went to Miami and received a masters in marine biology. During his stint in the U.S. Army he served as a medic. In 1973 he received a Ph.D. in marine sciences, for his study of octopus behavior.

Doing a 180 he worked as a chef in various NY restaurants, then he was a hippie, worked as a roadie for rock bands, was an analyst in Metropolitan Dade county, followed by the title of Director of Planning for HR; worked in D.C. in the Carter White House, Office of Science and Technology Policy; a policy analyst and speech writer for the EPA and was promptly promoted to Senior Executive Service of the U.S., the highest level of civil service.

Only then did he begin writing fiction, mostly writing the novels for Robert K. Tanenbaum after having moved to Seattle. Michael Gruber is a brilliant author whose books not only serve up great prose (and as is so often the case nary a plot to go with it), but delivers on both: a plot that is brilliant, cleverly worked out, and simultaneously delving deeply into the human condition. This, while reading along in "page turning" mode. That is not easy to do :-)

Michael Gruber is unique. I've only met a few that have read him, but he is an island unto his own: a brainy human being's thriller.

[The Pfaeffle Journal (Diane) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Good Son came as a recommendation on a national security podcast I listen to. I was able to find an audio version of the book from Audible. I don't understand much about the Middle East. I think that I understand enough to know that the United States is responsible for a lot of the animosity that comes from that area of the world. We have

The premise of the story is rather outlandish, despite that it provides a point of view for both west and east. There is so much propaganda about the middle-east that is hard for a person like myself to know what is truth or fiction. We forget that Pakistan and Afghanistan is the cradle of civilization. Their civilization is very different from ours - we tend to look down upon it, as we do not consider these countries to be modern.

Indus Valley Civilization

Civilization Name: Indus Valley Civilization

Period: 2600 BC -1900 BC

Originated Location: Around the basins of the Indus River

Current Location: Northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India

Major Highlights: One of the most widespread civilization, covering 1.25 km

Indus Valley Civilization



One of the oldest civilizations in this list, the Indus valley civilization lies at the very cradle of subsequent civilization that arose in the region of the Indus valley. This civilization flourished in areas extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India. Along with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilizations of the Old World, and of the three the most widespread, covering an area of 1.25 million km. Entire populations of people were settled around the basins of the Indus River, one of the major rivers in Asia, and another river named Ghaggar-Hakra which once used to course through northeast India and eastern Pakistan.

Also known as the Harappan civilization and the Mohenjo-Daro civilization – named after the excavation sites where the remains of the civilization were found, the peak phase of this civilization is said to have lasted from 2600 BC to around 1900 BC. A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident in the Indus Valley Civilization making them the first urban centers in the region. The people of the Indus Civilization achieved great accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time. And based on the artifacts found in excavations, it is evident the culture was rather rich in arts and crafts. [1. 10 Oldest Ancient Civilizations ever]

As the book says, "There was no Afghanistan the way there was a France or a Canada, there were onl individuals and families and clans, and the Americans trying to make it different was like assembling a fighter plane out of wet toilet paper."

This review was originally posted on The Pfaeffle Journal

[Ksenia Anske · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm one of those people who grew up in Soviet Russia, like grass. I grew up without religion but have also somehow managed to escape the whole communist propaganda, partly because I was creating my own stories in my head, so it's difficult for me to talk about religion, war, and politics, as I'm not an expert. But I can tell you that The Good Son is more than just simply a political thriller, it's the book that everyone should read, to be able to get off the predisposed upbringing of Western culture (I assume most of you who'll read this review are) and dip your head into Eastern culture, Muslim culture, that "other culture that you hardly know" to try and understand something that seems maybe non-understandable to you in a way; to think, to see how narrow your world vision is. I know mine is, and I'm glad I read this, it made me want to study more, to learn more, to stop being so sure of what I know, because I know nothing, even though I lived in 3 countries.

In short, The Good Son is about an American Special Operations soldier who is attempting to save his mother, a Muslim writer who travels to Pakistan and is taken hostage by terrorists. It's told from both mother's and son's perspectives, in a very no-nonsense way with excellent dry humor and satire intermixed with brutally honest scenes of interrogation, torture, inner army workings, and the like, things that you don't usually see in real life unless they're part of your job. Its horror is hair raising, its reality is blood-chilling, and its logic is stone-clad, until you begin to see how easily it is overturned, this way or that, depending on what line of thinking you apply to it, Taliban's, American, or Jung's teachings, or simply from the perspective of a family, of a relationship between a mother and a son. Read it, it will leave you stunned.

[.•º°༺×Ṩสℛสℋ×༻°º•. · Rating 4 out of 5]

#aroundtheworldin80books read for Pakistan:
Very good insight in the religious and philosophical mindset of the mujahideen. However the background story with the nuclear weapons was not necessary, made it a bit weird and unrealistic.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main plot revolves around a son (Theo Bailey) mounting a rescue of his mother (Sonia Bailey) who has been kidnapped by a group of terrorists. This mother, however, leaves the reader wondering why the son would bother to save her at all. When he was little, she abandoned him (more than once) to pursue her own interests. Also, she appeared to love and value another woman's son more than her own.

The characters' lives in the novel are so complicated that they seemed to live more than just one life. Sonia, for instance, was raised in an American circus, marries a Pakistani man, travels throughout Pakistan disguised as a boy with a Sufi mystic, writes a bestselling book, travels to Zurich, becomes a trained Jungian psychologist, rescues Theo when he was young man, and becomes a crusader for world peace. Theo was raised in Pakistan, kills a man at the age of 9, travels to Afghanistan where he becomes a guerrilla fighter against the Russians who have invaded Afghanistan, is kidnapped by this mother, and travels to the United States to become a member of an elite Special Operations unit designed to combat terrorism.

This novel is way too complicated, and sometimes not even believable. The ending is disappointing and very "Hollywoodish," that is, too neat and clean for all the preceding chaos.

[Francoise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trust Michael Gruber to write an unclassifiable book. Is it a thriller? Yes, complete with islamic mujahadeen, both dedicated and rogue CIA-types (and , yes, perhaps the rogue ones are the most dedicated...), kidnappings, beheadings, betrayals. Is it a book about sufi mysticism? Yes. Is it a book about Carl Jung? Yes. Is it a book about cross cultural (mis)understandings and how few people there are in the West who can understand even a word of the languages involved? Yes. Is it a book that gives you insights into Pakistani high society and Pashtoon tribal life that you never thought you might have been lacking? Yes. I loved every minute of this book and would like to peruse it in text (vs. books-on-tape) so I can resavor some of the precisely state psychological insights that just flow by when you listen to an audio book.

The kidnapped heroine, whose son sets out across countries and agencies to rescue her, believes that God is bigger than any religion. She is equally at home practicing Catholicism when she is in the West and practicing Islam when she is in the East -- without any trace of irony or pretense, circus girl though she is.

[Joel Margolese · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am close to saying that this novel is essential reading for it's fantastic portrayal of Muslim extremists and what motivated them. And the counter arguments.

Michael Gruber has, over the past few years become one of, if not my favorite current author. His recent books cover a wide range of situations, history and culture. In each I feel like he is giving us a great understanding of the characters and their society. From medieval italy to modern new York. In this book he takes us into Pakistan, Afghanistan and the heart of the jihad. At times he seems sympathetic to ther nihilistic cause but over time he exposes the falseness of the jihad based Islam and how the ignorant Pashtuns are caught up in a hopeless situation. He also points out the folly of us Asian policy and how little we understand that part of the world. He is scathing on current america. "I had a good 4th grade education so my mother said I could he ready to enter high school in america as a junior with no problems"
I enjoy how he reveals the character's backstories and in this novel they are wholly unexpected and unpredictable. It's a group of people that (mostly) I'd like to have to dinner.
The plot is intricate and cleverly interwoven. It's not perfect, but is well tied together.

[Kristina Writes Wrongs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d had Michael Gruber’s The Good Son on my shelves since 2010 so I decided to read it. At first I didn’t think I was going to like it. I had that “eh, it’s kinda interesting but I’m not sold on it yet” feeling about the book. But I stuck with it and the more I read, the more I liked it. This is a very good book. It’s well-written, suspenseful, and includes the most amazing discussions about American-Middle East relations and religion. There are excerpts of poems and songs from Middle Eastern poets scattered throughout the book. I’m always willing to learn about people from other cultures, but this book has left me with a definite curiosity about the people of the Afghanistan and Pakistan. I would also like to read the Koran/Qur’an to form my own opinion of it. I hear so often that Islam is a violent religion, but I suspect that the Koran is no more violent than the Bible. But I think it’s best to form my own opinion about it so I hope this year to read more about these countries and people.

At its most simple, The Good Son is about a psychologist and her colleagues being kidnapped in Pakistan while driving to a conference about how to bring peace to the Middle East and her family’s efforts to find her and rescue her. It’s a political thriller. However, it’s also an exploration of family relationships and cultural identity. Gruber does an excellent job of balancing the political intrigue and suspense of the novel with its deeper themes.

Sonia Bailey Laghari is a Pakistani (by marriage)-American. She is also a Jungian psychologist and proficient in many of the languages spoken in the Middle East. While en route from Lahore to her family’s home in Leepa Valley where the conference is to be held, the buses are ambushed, their Pakistani guards shot, and the attendees kidnapped. After being forced to walk for miles and then transported in trucks, they finally reach their destination, a small village in the Swat Valley in Pakistan. While being held captive, Sonia uses her Jungian training and understanding of the religion and mysticism of the culture to create tension between the two groups who allied to kidnap them. While this is happening, her son, Theo Bailey, is in Washington, D.C. recuperating from a combat wound. He is part of an unofficial CIA-like organization within the U.S. Army. Because his father is a Pakistani and Theo spent the first fifteen or so years of his life in Pakistan and Afghanistan, he is a valued asset of the army. He knows the languages and the culture and can blend in with the local people. When Theo learns that his mother has been kidnapped, he works with his father, Farid Laghari, and his father’s family in Pakistan to discover where the kidnappers took his mother and how she can be rescued. The third perspective of this story comes in the form of Cynthia Lam, a senior translator for the National Security Administration (NSA). While translating transmissions from Pakistan, she suspects that nuclear material has been stolen by terrorists and is being made into bombs. The novel moves between the three main characters (Sonia, Theo, and Cynthia) to create an overall gripping and fascinating story.

The novel contains quite a bit of backstory for all three of the main characters. Sometimes a lot of backstory can drag down the pacing, but the stories are so interesting in themselves that I wished Gruber had written a prequel to this novel. I’d have to say what I enjoyed the most about this book is that it is full of provocative ideas about religion and foreign policy. It made me think not just about the plot of the book, but about what the character was saying (usually Sonia). Sonia is a fascinating character who is an enigma to her husband and son and to her extended (husband’s) family. Her sister-in-law, Rukhsana, reassures Sonia that the family will be happy to see her: “Besides, in the family you know what we say: Sonia Sonia hai [Sonia is Sonia]. You are horrible but we still love you” (29). When in Lahore, she is interviewed by a Pakistani journalist on tv. Theo is watching this interview in America and is horrified by how freely she is speaking and what she says. Her theories (which are interesting but I won’t recap them here; the scene takes place pages 45-47) cause Theo to leave her an angry message on her cell phone: “I was pretty calm, considering that she had just pissed off on international television every bunch of armed maniacs on the planet except the Basques. What was she thinking? Did she want to get blown up?” (48). The irony of this is, of course, she’s already been kidnapped by terrorists but Theo doesn’t know this yet.

This book doesn’t pull its punches. Most of the characters in this book are no stranger to violence and death and violence and death occur. While Sonia is held captive, she uses her Jungian training to interpret the dreams of her captors. The village mullah suspects her of being a witch and says she is committing blasphemy and if she does not confess her feet will be bound and lashed with a whip. Sonia refuses to confess, telling the mullah that he is committing a crime by not judging her according to sharia. While Mahmoud whips her feet with a bamboo cane, Sonia chants a Sufi prayer and shouts “Haram!” (which I infer to mean an act that is forbidden and shameful according to Islam). When the mullah gags her to stop her from chanting prayers, the women of the village take up her cry of “Haram!” because it is a grave offense in Islam to silence prayer. When the women begin chanting, the men have lost:

This is now the nightmare of the Pashtun male. The women are out of control and it is the women who have the honor of the men in their hands. The women know everything. They know who likes to fuck boys, and who is a drunk, and who can’t get it up in the marriage bed, and for this reason they can never be allowed to escape the iron grip of the men. (162)

There are a lot of passages in this book that are examples not only of excellent writing but of concepts that made me stop reading and consider the philosophical argument of what the character was saying. I’d like to quote them all, but many of them contain spoilers and most of them are too damn long to quote in their entirety. During the book, Theo has to come to terms with his mother as a person and their strange relationship and his own dual nature—American and Pakistani. This is the instance in the book in which Theo realizes he is a Pakistani:

That’s what I was thinking while the briefing was going on, and I was thinking also about the strange gravity of American soldiers, how isolated they are from their own society, where death is ignored or, when it comes, gets treated like an unfortunate mistake, or sentimentally, with the candles, the ribbons, the teddy bears, and how they struggle to make war safe for their guys, like it was pro football or something. And the heaviness of their wit, their American joshing, the sports talk, so different from that of my grandfather and his friends or my Pashtuns. They are terrific men; I admired them, but right there in that meeting I understood that I was not and never would be like that. I would never be easy with such men, nor they with me, and my American self sort of dribbled away. I looked out at the meeting through Pashtun eyes and felt like the oldest man in the room. (337)

The poetry of Rahman Baba, a Pashtun who died in the early eighteenth century, is quoted throughout the book. The author includes the sources of his quotes and says he translated the poetry from its original Pashto and Urdu books. I’m immensely curious about the author. He is American, but he seems to have extensive knowledge of the culture, language, traditions and languages of the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan. His bio is short and doesn’t say much but he seems to have such an amazing intimate knowledge of the subject of this book that I wonder if he lived in or has family ties to the region. Gruber vividly brings the country alive for me in a scene on page 178. Before Theo joined the mujahideen and fought against the Russians, he was a shepherd. This is how Gruber has Theo describe the Pashtun region to Gloria, his girlfriend:

It’s no mystery why shepherds have featured so much in the great religions; being out in all weathers, under nothing but the sky, you can feel the eye of God on you all the time, and also the stupidity of the sheep, the constant worry over what they’re getting into, makes you think you should try your hand at fixing the stupidity of men. That, and the land itself, the bony country of the Pashtun: looming hills, red and tan and black above the evergreen forests, and the other colors I can’t name, depending on the light and the season; and the softness of the floodplains, their green more gracious and lovely for the contrast with their setting of flint. The white of the apricot trees in the spring, and in early summer the whole valley would be red with poppies, and in their midst you could see from the heights the glittering, braided river. And the air of the place, sharp as glass shards in the winter, like breathing live flame in deep summer, and the nights, ear-hissing silent except for the imbecile moaning of the sheep and the eternal wind in the stunted thornbushes, and overhead a million stars wheeling over the black rim of our canyon.

I highly recommend this book. It’s a political thriller, but it’s also incredibly well-written and questions the extent to which morality, religion, culture and family identity influence a person’s decisions and actions.

Why don’t you look at me properly?/Why do you magnify my suffering?/The torturer flays for a reason./What’s yours, beloved?/Ask your fierce eyes/Why they cut me to pieces.

--Rahman Baba

[Ann Collette · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can accept the premise of this many-faceted political thriller -- that a diverse group of noted professionals, including an American billionaire -- would go, with minimal armed protection, to the boonies in contemporary Pakistan for a conference on peace, you're in for a very intriguing read. This isn't a book you can gobble up in one night -- too many complex ideas are presented through the characters, who never come off as mouthpieces but are fully rounded, complicated human beings. When a U.S. Special Operations soldier, born in Pakistan, determines to rescue his mother, a brilliant writer with a fatwa against her, from the terrorists who kidnapped her along with the other conference members, he devises a ruse involving his Pakistani family to deceive the U.S. government into believing Taliban terrorists have a nuclear bomb. The plot stretches credibility but this is a character and idea driven novel, and the characters, especially the women, are rich and fascinating. Sonia, the soldier's mother, is a Jungian psychotherapist who is both a practing Muslim and a practicing Catholic. Thanks to her fluency in languages and her unshakeable faith, she is able to endure the torture the Taliban puts her through, all the while manipulating them -- to a certain degree-- by interpreting their dreams on the sly for them. If this sounds far fetched, it's to the author's credit that it never reads this way and is, instead, a fascinating way to present historical and cultural background on the peoples of Pakistan and how these influences drive them. Sonia's an absolute marvel of a character -- brilliant, contrary, crafty, true to herself no matter the situation. Another characer, Cynthia Lam, a workaholic half Vietnamese/half French Canadian who, while working for the NSA stumbles onto the supposedly stolen nuclear material ruse, is also wonderfully realized and unique; both she and Sonia are two fully developed female characters in a genre short on them. But this thriller is at heart a book of sophisticated political ideas about the difference between Western culture and morality and that of the Pashtuns of Pakistan. I think I learned more about the Pashtun culture reading this book than I have from any newspaper or magazine article and feel informed in a way few thrillers rarely leave a reader. I also thought it amazing how the author was able to create such believable atmosphere, making it seem as though he knew Pakistan as well as the back of his hand.

[Kater Cheek · Rating 4 out of 5]

My book club chose this book, and the response from some fellow members (whose opinion I admire) was lukewarm, so I am surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. Of course, their main complaint is that Gruber uses uncommon words (gelid, deracinated) and obscure military terms a little too often without explanation. That's not one of my pet peeves.

The story involves a group of conference attendees, intellectuals and westerners among them, who are kidnapped on the way to their conference site about how to bring peace to the Middle East in general and Pakistan in particular. It also involves the son of one of the kidnapped women, an elite military man who is hell-bent on rescuing her.

What I enjoyed about this novel was the in-depth way it explored Pashtun culture, and how it conflicted with the culture of that Afghanis, the Hindis, and the "Arabs." I find Central Asia in general and the Kashmir region in particular fascinating, and since I wouldn't want to travel there without a penis, books provide a safe journey.

I also liked the way Gruber dealt with the American sub-cultures, like the military sub-culture and the NSA sub-culture. He treats them, as well as the Pakistani sub-cultures, with sympathy. No, not sympathy, but the kind of close understanding that blends sympathy and contempt in equal measure, as one has for people one knows very well.

Because it's a tense and hostile situation, involving soldiers, in a land where human lives are cheap, there's plenty of action and bloodshed to keep the action going. We don't really know who will live and who will die.

Surprisingly, I also enjoyed the religious aspects of it. The main character, Sonia, is both a practicing Catholic and a practicing Muslim, and she has studied Jungian psychoanalysis (does anyone DO that anymore?) and a kind of mysticism endemic to the area. She quotes the Koran to her kidnappers, and quotes Rumi and other poets to the other prisoners, and generally provides a spiritual center to what would otherwise be a rather Tom Clancy-esque novel.

I did find the characters a little unbelievable. Sonia rolled all 18s, for example. Not only is she fluent beyond fluent (and literate) in a handful of obscure languages, but she's also mastered every trick a stage magician or circus performer might have learned, and she's never forgotten them. She seems to have whatever skill she needs at any given time. I'll forgive Sonia's over-the-top perfectionism, because she's a highly unusual person. I'll even forgive Theo's unstoppable manliness, because he at least has flaws to balance it out.

What I didn't like were Gloria and Cynthia and even Sonia's blase "well, I guess I'll fuck him" attitude towards sex. I especially disbelieved Gloria. She's a smoking hot, brilliant woman, who sleeps with Theo because she doesn't want a man to mess up her life. Generally, the term for a woman who wants sex but doesn't want a man to mess up her life is "single, dildo-owner." I'm not saying that smoking hot women never carry on affairs with men they don't love, but I don't think it happens as often in real life as it does in novels written by men. Beyond her hot-sex fantasy element, Gloria serves the same purpose as Theo's comatose friend in the hospital. She's basically a mannequin that Theo uses as an audience for his expository flashback scenes. She never feels like a real person, however. At one point, Gloria says something like "we all secretly long for protectors to spray our precious little eggies" and it was so bizarre it pulled me out of the novel faster than a hand being waved in front of my face.

Cynthia also flirts with and generally cold-heartedly manipulates men. She thinks "he'll do what I want because I'm sexy" instead of "he'll do this because I can convince him, because he likes me." She looks in the mirror, sees "hot" and decides to wield it like a club. I suppose women like that do exist, but often by the time a woman figures out she's attractive enough to make men do what she wants, she's already lost most of that attraction. The window is narrow, and it generally hits when you're too young and dumb to exploit it. I suppose it's plausible, but Cynthia also felt like a woman written from a distinctly male point of view. She lacked an insecurity, a compassion, a _something_, that make female characters resonate as feminine.

There are some torture scenes(which I didn't enjoy), and a lot of brutal violence scenes in this novel. It didn't leave me feeling dirty, however, because the ending had a satisfactory resolution. Most importantly, the plotting was tight and I became involved enough in Sonia and Theo to want to keep reading instead of doing other, important things, like go to bed on time.

[Yelena · Rating 5 out of 5]

If it was possible to give this novel six stars, then I’d be adding seven.

Told from the point of view of three main characters: Theo the “Good Son”, Sonia his mother, and Cynthia an NSA translator. Michael Gruber explores the nature of the USA security bureaucracy, the “war” on terrorism, Pashtun culture, Afghanistan, Pakistani society and the tenets of Islam ... from a Jungian perspective!

To put it simply, I found it a multifaceted and complex novel. “Second Son” is wholly responsible for two seriously late nights.

[Greg Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isn't it great when a novel surprises you? Despite the fact that Michael Gruber's The Good Son contained three of my literary pet peeves -- story told in flashback, story told in alternating strains of storyline, and dreams and their interpretations playing important roles in the story -- I really enjoyed it.

Gruber is known as a writer with incredible range, writing books about forged paintings, lost Shakespeare plays, cop thrillers, and now this: a ripped-from-the-headlines international thriller with an intellectual bent. Indeed, if Gruber's name wasn't splashed across the cover, you might think Vince Flynn, who had suddenly learned how to write well, had been trapped in a room with John LeCarre, with the resulting work edited and polished by Khaled Hosseini (of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns fame).

The Good Son contains three strains of story: 1) Theo Laghiri is a special forces soldier back in the US to recuperate after being injured in Afghanistan by friendly fire. 2) His mother Sonia, a bit of a free spirit, is organizing a conference in Lahore, Pakistan to discuss how to bring peace to Central Asia. This is a risky move, to say the least, as she is infamous in the Muslim world for a book she wrote in her younger years in which she chronicled her experience of dressing as a man and going on haj to Mecca. Muslims were not amused, and there is a Rushdie-esque fatwa out on her. 3) National Security Agency up-and-comer Cynthia Lam has translated some intercepted communications between what appear to be Muslim terrorists plotting something big. She follows leads and hunches, and plots to use the situation to advance her own career.

And so, as they must, the stories converge at first subtly, and then rapidly, making for a fast-paced, exhilarating second half. But even the back-stories of Sonia's young-womanhood and Theo's childhood in Pakistan that make up good chunks of the front part of the novel are so rich in detail and intrigue, it'd be impossible to tell the real-time story as effectively without them. Sometimes, with back-story, you wonder how much is relevant or even necessary. Not here -- it all is.

Other chunks of the novel are conversations between characters (Sonia vs. Muslim jihadists) in argument regarding the terrorist rationale and the debunking of such. Part of this is Sonia (as a trained Jungian psychologist) interpreting dreams. These dreams and their well-written and logical interpretations provide a fascinating insight into the Muslim religion; one that makes you appreciate the purity and beauty of a religion that has been polluted by radical fundamentalism. Additionally, Gruber's handle on Pakistani and Afghan culture is brilliant, especially in showing the profound differences between those and American culture and thought.

Another really interesting part of the book emerges in the first 100 or so pages, as Theo tries to re-acclimate himself into day-to-day American life. Three different times, he ruminates about the ignorance of Americans about what is happening on the other side of the world; about how angry it makes him and other soldiers that we deign to "support our troops" but have no idea what the wars are really like. Theo says, "...when you come back, you kind of secretly want your fellow citizens to get blown up a little; we don't admit it, but it's true. How the f#@k can they be so -- I don't know, normal, like in a dream of shopping and careers and ordinary daily bullsh!t, while what's going on over there is going on?" And then later: "...maybe obsessing about money and sex and celebrities and celebrity sex and the teams is a sign that the terror has failed to bite, which is great, but if it's no big deal, why the hell are we breaking the army into pieces over it? ...it's another thing that makes me snap and get pissed at my fellow Americans."

Overall, I'd rate The Good Son 4 out of 5 stars -- minus a star because at times, you really have to suspend disbelief. Still, this will certainly be a satisfying read for anyone who likes fast-paced thrillers that challenge readers to think deeply...maybe about some preconceptions you've never really spent any time or energy to really consider.

[Bruce Stern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Gruber’s newest thriller is more than that. In fact, it’s at least two distinct stories. One is the thriller—a mother gets kidnapped (along with a bunch of her friends—professional colleagues), in war-torn Pakistan. Her son, an American black ops soldier conspires to rescue her, and the NSA gets involved in the shenanigans. This is all pretty straightforward and mostly unexciting, although torture . The other part of this tale is by far the fascinating, imaginative and also enlightening aspect.
The mother, Sonia (Bailey) Laghari, is a circus-raised American of Catholic Polish ancestry, who marries a Pakistani-American academic. She discovers her proficiency for languages, learning well several of the Central Asian tongues, after moving to Lahore, during her travels with an itinerant Sufi guide, leaving her son and husband behind. As the result of writing about Muslim lands and culture she ends up in Zurich where she gets analyzed by a Jungian psychotherapist and becomes one herself. She spends time in the States as a practicing therapist.
Her son, Theo (Bailey) Laghari, steeped in the culture of urban upper class Pakistani life, and later, rural Pashtun and mujahideen culture and warfare, ends up a more than typically confused teenager in America. He’s a prime candidate for membership in America’s armed forces.
The meat and enjoyment of this adventure comes from the explication of Islamic philosophy and doctrine, urban Pakistani family life, Pashtun tribal beliefs and practices, the juxtaposition of Anglicized urban Pakistani and rural cultures, analyses of American foreign policy, especially as it concerns Islamic cultures, the factional Pakistani intelligence services, dream analyses, the appropriateness of Western psychotherapeutic culture in non-Western cultures, and the relationships between authentic Islamic philosophy and jihadist culture and behaviors.
There was a great deal of fascinating and enlightening information wrapped around this basic thriller story which will appeal to you if you’re open to learning about aspects of worlds which you may have thought you knew about.
Finally, who is “The Good Son”? He may or may not be the obvious choice from reading this review. Then again, he may be someone else, or maybe not even a person.
Read this book for the philosophical meanderings and enlightenment value, rather than for its quality as a thriller.

[PDXReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read and loved Gruber's The Forgery of Venus: A Novel and The Book of Air and Shadows, and was very much looking forward to The Good Son. I was surprised at just how disappointed I was in it. My goodness, what flaws! Yes, the main characters have depth, but they're completely unbelievable. The set-up is very clumsy, and much of the background information the reader is given is provided in very stilted conversation (more like monologue, actually). The plot is largely predictable, somewhat ridiculous, and a plot twist at the end makes no sense whatsoever. The novel's only redeeming quality is that it's got a few interesting things to say about the Muslim mindset, but as this is from a Western point of view I'm not sure how valid Gruber's conclusions are. Overall, I wish I hadn't wasted my time reading what boiled down to a second-rate thriller.

[Debra]

Stephen King recommended: He said: "Sonia Bailey, a remarkably astute woman with a colorful backstory, leads a peace delegation into Pakistan, where her party is kidnapped by jihadists. Her son Theo sets an elaborate rescue plot in motion...but Sonia has a few tricks up her own sleeve. Let's just say she out-mullahs the mullahs. The suspense is terrific, but in this book it's a bonus. I learned more about the jihadist mindset in these pages--and in an entertaining way--than in all the cable-TV punditry I've seen since 9-11. Cerebral, emotional, heartfelt, this one's the complete package. President Obama, if you happen to come across this column, read this book."—Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

[Mary Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Good Son by Michael Gruber is about American involvement in the Middle East, nuclear bombs, the NSA, and Al Quaeda as well as a good deal of philosophizing about the Middle Eastern and Western cultures and religions, psychology, and dream analysis.

The basic storyline is how Sonia Bailey’s son Theo, who both have dual American/Pakistani citizenship, rescues Sonia from a mujahideen group, with the help of his father. Theo’s first person narration begins the novel but Gruber also uses third person omniscient to tell the story and reveals the history of these characters through flashbacks.

Theo is in the U.S. Army’s special ops Tactical Intelligence Support Detachment, a shooter whose job is to commit some form of necessary violence (6). He’s fluent in Dari, Pashto and Urdu, and when the book begins, he’s at Walter Reed getting physical therapy to recover from a broken leg, a smashed shoulder, and a cracked wrist.

Sonia is a writer and counselor, who when the books begins is traveling to Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan, for a conference on how to bring peace to the Middle East. She’s set up the conference with a wealthy Pakistani sponsor who’s invited an eccentric, American telecom billionaire; an Indian psychiatrist and ethnographer; a Canadian Jesuit priest; an American Quaker couple who helped end the conflict in Angola; and a psychotherapist and old friend of Sonia’s. Sonia’s sister-in-law, a reporter for a liberal English paper (27) will also attend, and Sonia persuades one of her brothers-in-law, in exchange for a meeting with the billionaire, to let the group meet in a family country home. Enroute they are taken prisoner and told that each time any natives die by infidel hands while they are detained, a prisoner will be beheaded.

Sonia’s kidnapping prods Theo to abandon treatment and hatch a plan to rescue her which brings into the picture the NSA translator Cynthia Lam, “product of a Vietnamese father and a French-Canadian mother” (63) and an expert in Arabian languages because NSA intelligence turns up phone conversations about nuclear weapons in Pakistan, which, ironically, is what Bailey comes up with as a ploy to get Americans to go where Sonia is being held so he can rescue her.

It turn out that Theo’s cousin Wazir, whom Theo loves like a brother, is an active CIA agent (Abu Lais) who has built six nuclear bombs and has one at the site where Sonia and the other conference participants are being held.

Definitely one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever encountered, Sonia is the daughter of a magician and an aristocratic Polish woman who, on the run from the Gestapo after her family is murdered, gets the magician to smuggle her to freedom and thereafter works with him in the circus. Sonia becomes a competent performer, but when her parents die and the circus declines, she seeks work as a typist. Destitute and starving, she meets wealthy Pashtun Farid Laghari, a law student at Columbia, who hires her to type his notebooks and thesis, falls in love with her and takes her home to Lahore where she alienates his mother, charms his father, converts to Islam, weds Farid and bears him a son Theo who is immediately taken in hand by his grandmother.

Bored and out of place in Pakistan, Sonia seeks adventure by disguising herself as a boy and traveling through Soviet Central Asia as disciple murid) to a Sufi sage and then going on the haj and writing about both. That embarrasses her husband’s family and leads to a fatwa on Sonia. A tribal conflict results in the death of her father-in-law and children, two daughters and, she first believes, Theo. Wanting her to work with them, the NSA tells her Theo is alive and offers to bring him to her in return for her service, but not before he’s earned a reputation throughout the country as a formidable warrior named Kakay Ghazan. NSA hopes Theo will become a sleeper mole to monitor the Pakastani development of nuclear weapons, but he’s not smart enough, so Sonia offers her nephew Wazir who is educated in the United States and then set up in Pakistan, so deep undercover that he knows about, but does nothing to prevent or warn about 9/11.

In the end, Wazir and his bombs are somewhere in the Middle East; Theo is in Lahore, he and Sonia are reconciled, he’s working for his uncle, and just as he’s thinking it’s time to start a family, Cynthia Lam shows up and agrees to a dinner date after which he wants to introduce her to Sonia who’s there on a visit.

Gruber provides a great deal of information that sounds authentic and makes a persuasive case for Middle East conflicts being solved within the umma (Arabian world) without American involvement.

For example:
Sonia clearly states that the US and world should completely withdraw and develop other sources of oil (46), that the Israelis can take care of themselves (47), and “America is incapable of rational action” (47) in Pakistan.

Later she says, “It’s a Western delusion that all psychological problems are reducible to restrictions on individual freedom. In other cultures, including the one we’re talking about, the highest value is not freedom at all. It’s harmony within the family and the tribe and the sense that the person is doing the right thing with respect to tradition” (197).

NSA agent Harry Anspach says, “No one is ever going to use nuclear weapons against a nation that has nuclear weapons. As soon as anyone has nuclear weapons, they immediately become grown-ups. … part of the balance of terror” (220).

American are unbelievers while Muslims are believers. “What America believes in is progress, money, sex, fame, and military strength with a national philosophy based on pragmatism. (In the Middle East people) are still in the fifteenth century. The unseen world is very real to them” (276).

Sonia says, “. . . existing in two cultures as I do provides a different perspective on things. It inclines one to the long view” (331). (Pakistan) “was once connected to a universal empire that stretched from Spain to Indonesia. …Baghdad was the capital of the world, the riche3st city since the fall of Rome. Basra was the intellectual center of that world” (332). In comparison, “the cities of the West can’t look the same, and by extension, the whole culture seems almost provisional” (333).

“So it’s 1987 the jihad is winding down, and the CIA is thick in Afghanistan. … This Soviet threat they’ve been working against is crap. The great Red Army can’t even provide bullets and food for its troops. The idea that this army could attack Europe or anywhere else against the wishes of the U.S. military is revealed as nonsense. …So, the start asking, Where’s the next enemy? … They see the jihad, the movement they helped to create, and at the center of this movement is a man they have built up into a great leader … he sees America, far more than Russia, is the reason the Muslims are groaning under oppression” (361).

“Sufi … an odd brand of Islam … They believe … God is beyond all human description … he is always a surprise and trying to chain Him to a human religion is folly” (367).

“In a world ruled by violence, you can’t protect love without becoming warped and injured in some way” (372).

[Rik Helton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting story but in the end just too many coincidences to get to the ending the author wanted.

[Flannery · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really amazing. It´s a thriller, a book about cultural differences and about Jung´s psychology. It´s about expectations, prejudices, paranoia. There´s really a lot of paranoia.

The story divides itself into three parts. One part is about Theo, the son. The question wether he is the good son out of the title is a good one. The reader is open to guess - at the end of the book there are obviously two candidates for this title. Anyway, Theo is an army soldier, half american and half pakistan. He has a mysterious and colorful past, which will be revealed later on. The second part is about Sonia, his mother. Her history is even more colorful. She is a former circus child, now married to Farid, the son of a rich and influential pakistan family, she travelled through Pakistan and Afganistan, disguised as a man, she even went on the hadj, disguised as a man. She lost her daughters, went half crazy and became a Jungean psychotherapist. This sounds like a very unlikely adventure story, and it may be a bit much, but I didn´t mind. The third part of the story is about Cynthia, a translator, who works for the NSA and becomes entangled in a very complex and mysterious plot.

The story unfolds when Sonia is kidnapped in Pakistan together with members of a conference. Theo tries to help her and comes up with a plan that is totally nuts. All the while Sonia starts her own plan and Cynthia herself is coming up with her plan. The reader never gets to know all the details, this unfolds slowly in the course of the book. And that really is thrilling.

But this is not all. While the reader is keen to know what is going on, there are these peculiar conversations between the members of the conference. They come from different countries and belong to different religions. They discuss christianity and muslim faith, the role of women in the muslim world, muslim thinking and so on. There are very interesting positions and one starts to think about these topics too. Are there cultural differences which can never be overcome? Has one to accept the strange and alien opinions of people from other cultures, although those opinions go against one´s believes? Is it right to jugde other religions from the standpoint of christianity or from the standpoint of the west? Is it right to judge them at all?

Then the story itself - it sometimes seems like a hegelian plot. The protagonists have their individual aims and their different means, and in the end it doesn´t matter. It´s like Hegel´s philosophy of history, where the individual has it´s individual aims and at the end contributes to the rational "Weltgeist". In this book, there is no "Weltgeist" and there is no rationality. The principles here are called contingence and CIA. And you can plan everything, but the result is never as expected. At least, you can trust no one. And musing over moral questions - you have to develop your own stance. The people in the book won´t really help you.

But that´s how it is. And a book, so entertaining and so intellectual at the same time deserves five stars. Go and rate for yourself.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of Michael Gruber and have read (almost) all his books, so you might think I'm biased--but a glance over the Goodreads reviews finds almost everyone giving this one at least 4 stars. It is an astonishingly complex and multifaceted description of middle-eastern as opposed to western values and religious outlooks, all wrapped up in a spy thriller. My only reservations are that it starts ponderously, having to initiate many threads, and that the characters' backgrounds are hardly credible. But Gruber writes with such authority that you accept whatever he says, and once you've accepted the premises, after the first 75 pages the book is hard to put down. Some character or another voices virtually every view I have ever thought or heard about the clash of cultures, and all of them are given fair representation. Finally, I think Gruber would come down somewhere near the idea that the west, while allegedly Christian, is actually capitalistic and driven by the unquestioned desire for personal freedom; the middle east, while allegedly Muslim, is actually feudalistic, driven by the unquestioned desire for clan honor. Truly religious people are not at home in either place. All the political and religious theorizing exists within Gruber's vividly authentic descriptions of actual life as lived. The plot (not to mention the plottings of the various characters) is so complex that near the end, Sonia tells "not the true story, of course....Has she ever told the true story? Probably not. Would she recognize the true story if she heard it? Probably not." And she knows more about what has happened than anybody else. The violence is sporadic but very detailed and unflinching when it occurs. One episode in particular was far out of my comfort zone, but it turned out to be absolutely necessary for both the plot and the story's significance. From now on every news report I read about Afghanistan or Pakistan will be colored by my experience of this book.

[Meagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nancy Pearl again. 2 books in one day. Shall we make it 3?

--------------------

Well, I'm afraid I'm going to damn this book with some faint praise.

There's a lot of intriguing stuff in The Good Son, mostly stemming from its point of view. The main characters straddle two worlds almost equally: the traditional Islamic world of Pakistan and the modern Western world. As a result, the story feels balanced. You're presented with an idea of jihad that transcends the knee-jerk panic we've been trained to have, and instead offers some insight into what jihad means. Or at least what it meant. Jihad today is (seemingly) treated by many Muslims like the sanctity of the fetus is treated by many Christians. They scream about God and life as they bomb innocent people. But never mind. If that's the kind of discussion that makes your ears perk up, this is a great option for you.

Sadly, for me, as a thriller it never got off the ground. It made a valiant effort, and there were several moments that I felt a little thrill and was sure that we were about to take off. I was endlessly intrigued by Sonia Bailey, and had expectations for her that were never fully met. We never really made it off the ground, and I was the most disappointed in the last 30 or so pages. I had been thinking to myself that the whole story felt kind of rudderless, and was coming to terms with it. Maybe this was the storytelling device, right? None of us has any real control and we're just witnessing this particular family having no control. But things wrap up in such a way that I couldn't help feeling it was the teeniest tiniest bit...contrived. So in the end even the book straddled two worlds: novel of ideas and spy thriller. And neither one came out as well as it could have.

But like I said... It had a lot of interesting things to say. Faint praise,

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

About two years ago, in an effort to keep up with books on the paperback fiction shelves at Once Upon A Time (where I used to work and for which I blog) I read Gruber's The Book of Air and Shadows. It almost made my Top 10 list that year (there was stiff competition from the likes of Michael Chabon, Suzanne Collins, Toni Morrison and more) but I went on to hand sell many copies and my husband became a fan as well.

The Good Son is his latest and it is a great read. Some of the gratuitous flippancy from the earlier book is happily missing. Gruber boldly takes on Afghanistan from the viewpoint of WTF are we doing there and in my opinion does a credible and righteous job of laying out the true issues. His plotting skills are even more developed and the characters are drawn the way characters should be: by what they do.

Theo is the eponymous "good son." His father is a Pakistani from a wealthy family who married his mother, a former child circus performer. Theo was raised by his Pakistani grandmother in Lahore and often abandoned by his mother, who is another complex character. In fact, it is complexity which gives this novel its tension and makes its many twists and turns so exciting. Somehow, Gruber makes complexity easy to read about.

A reading moment: this is the second book I have read recently featuring a son who wants to save his mother. (The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff was the other.) Both sons had been abandoned by their mothers early in life and both found their task a thankless one. Could it be that mothers who abandon/neglect/reject their kids don't want to be saved? Comments welcome.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Gruber book that I have read and I find it hard to write a review that expresses the depth of this book eloquently enough to do it justice.

I was fascinated with all the background information and explanations of the Pakistani culture. I am not educated on this information so I do not know if there are any errors in Gruber's descriptions. Even if the facts are the results of an author's imagination, it is truly moving to read and put yourself in the shoes of these characters.

I was fascinated by how Mr. Gruber described many different views on religion. It was interesting how the family members interacted. There were so many dynamics within the family structure...mother/son, wife/husband, in-laws/daughter-in-law, etc. Mr. Gruber described these dynamics well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book once I changed my paradigm. I was expecting to read a thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat. I think so much background information and explanations took away the suspense of the story. I was anxious to see the resolution but I was not tense as I read the book. I predicted some of the ending way ahead of time but I was not disappointed in the overall story.

Overall, I would say that this a good book. It is a fascinating description of the Middle East culture and the dynamics within that culture. I would not read it for the thriller aspect but it is definitely worth reading. Based on this book, I will be reading more Gruber books in the near future.

(I received this book from LibraryThing in exchange for a review.)

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an informative and absorbing tour through the quote-unquote war on terror and family dynamics, two of the more harrowing places in which to find yourself. Gruber clearly knows his stuff, on both fronts. I can't say I liked the main characters, but I did respect, as well as empathize with them. You can't ask for more than that.

The book lapsed a little too often into exposition to move the story along, and I found myself having to reread sections to understand what was happening, especially earlier in the story.

Occasionally a plot point, usually a twist, would be introduced, followed by an expository passage explaining why it happened. Not the most vivid way to tell a story, though it has the virtue of brevity. But it was overused, I think, which made the story seem rushed in places. When I got to the end, I felt like I had seen the story unfold rather than experienced it. If the entire story had been as vivid as some of the individual scenes, this would have been a tour de force.

But the characters were fresh and original, the ruminations on the current geopolitical morass incisive, and the action scenes believable and gripping. If you want a thriller that's not dumbed down, and written in an impeccable style, this one's for you!

ADDENDUM: There are times when I wish I could rate book by a number of criteria. For this one, I'd go a full five stars for sense of place, and a little less than three for storytelling, for the reasons outlined earlier. Ideas and characters, get a four.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are books about Pakistan and Afghanistan written by natives that are spot-on fascinating accounts of life there, for example Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which is heart-breaking and beautiful and worth reading again. However with the rise of neo-Orientalism, or whatever it's called, has come a long line of authors with South Asian names and no real writing abilities who've dumped trite books full of stereotypes, often full of preconceptions conflating ethnic differences with character flaws. One of the biggest problem with this rise is that it's the lazy-person's way out. Because of the overwhelming influence of Lacan, no one can now "know" what life is like in any place better than a resident, even if the resident is kept in a Skinner box or is completely unobservant.

The Good Son is written by an American, of European descent I presume from his name and photo, but he describes Pakistan as if I was still sitting there without condescension to any aspect of the various native ethnicities, and with great appreciation of the detail of life. I smelled the coal burning on cold days in Lahore, and the dust on the roads, and the grease from the lamb karahi. Besides detail and accuracy, it's also a great pot-boiling read with good commentary on aspects of life there that are unique, for example the contrast between Lahori professional women and cloistered Pashtus.

[Jana Bouc · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave up halfway through for all the reasons given in the review by Elizabeth on November 5, 2010:

I loved Elizabeth's synopsis of the characters who I found unbelievable. Elizabeth said: "Sonia, for instance, was raised in an American circus, marries a Pakistani man, travels throughout Pakistan disguised as a boy with a Sufi mystic, writes a bestselling book, travels to Zurich, becomes a trained Jungian psychologist, rescues Theo when he was young man, and becomes a crusader for world peace. Theo was raised in Pakistan, kills a man at the age of 9, travels to Afghanistan where he becomes a guerrilla fighter against the Russians who have invaded Afghanistan, is kidnapped by this mother, and travels to the United States to become a member of an elite Special Operations unit designed to combat terrorism."

Since many reviews said the ending was ridiculous, I decided to cut my losses and return the audio book to the library without finishing it. I'd been pretty much tuning it out for the last whole CD while one character tells his story to another. I thought good writing was about showing not telling. Way too much lecturing and telling in this one.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great start to this book, the beginning just brought me right into the world of Theo, his mood, his non-anchored restlessness. But the more it progressed, the more awkward the transitions and more unbelievable characters and plot, IMHO. There were more than a few lengthy monologues of philosophy from Sonia that I just reread twice and said, "HUH?" to myself. Such as when she was explaining that the cutting off of noses, hands, feet and torture to women for incidental minor happenings is common, as it can be accepted as a kind of downside much equivalent to the setbacks to individuals caused by rampant capitalism. WHAT? And this protagonist voices it as a personal theory of fact? Placating works with that kind of "fact"?

The culture clash, ethnic followings, language differences for shifting and opposing values- all of that is clearly demonstrated to an excellent degree- that was a 4 star level all the way.

But the entire plot and especially the ending- on the whole- I just couldn't swallow it as believable. Too many stilted monologues by far. But at the same time the book demonstrated incredible motivational insight into terrorist and violence mindset.(less)

[Mary Holland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written and thought-provoking thriller. Only Michael Gruber would have a female Jungian psychologist, who is also both a Muslim and a Catholic, be captured by Islamic terrorists. I am always astonished at this author's ability to render unfamiliar societies in depth and detail: life in upper class Pakistani society, life in the poor villages of Pakistan, the much shallower lives of what a character calls the "chattering classes" in America, growing up as a young boy in the jihad, all have an authentic tone. Essential to the thriller (besides the portable atom bomb, of course) is the spiritual life of the characters. Some of my favorite bits are Sonia's dream interpretations for her terrorist captors, where she concedes all power to them while working on their deepest fears. Amazing. Highly recommended.

[DW · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Totally utterly average. Not the sort of book I typically read and I had no idea what it was about until I opened it. Political thriller set mostly in Pakistan and the US. Not very well written and there were some things that really bothered me. First this was SOOOO written by a man (think improbable male fantasies fulfilled). The second thing that annoyed me to no end was that in almost all the instances where Arabic was spoken (such as prayer time) the author didn't use the Arabic, but put the words in English instead. I found this kind of patronizing. We don't all need to understand Arabic but it would lend the text more credibility if the devotee said "Allahu Akbar" instead of "God is great". Minor point, but it grated on me. Not the worst beach or plane read if you're looking for something light and fast but don't go out of your way for it.

[Suzanne Kittrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good summer read but M. Gruber treads on the edges of my mind so I have to take pleasure in some of the smaller things that make his books interesting. Like learning about "ghazels" which are Urdu love poetry (many times set to melodies) of such beauty and heart wrenching sadness or happiness. This book tells a tale set in Pakistan and Afghanistan and of course the CIA and the Taliban who are all involved in a serpentine plot. But the author gave me a good picture of the society of that part of the world and though I would not want to be there, I do understand better the society and the tribes and the culture. And I also understand the other sad fact is that Afghanistan really has nothing to offer the world, at this time, except heroin and rocks.