The Unknown Terrorist:
A Novel
The plot focuses on Gina Davies, a 26-year old pole dancer passing for 22 in a semi-seedy profession not known for its loyalty to strangers, truth telling, sexual innocence, or the aging process. But Gina is smart and street-savvy in addition to fully attractive (she is called “The Doll” throughout the novel), and so in addition to buying designer gladrags and handbags she saves most of her money for a soon-to-be exit from the Chairman’s Lounge in Sydney. She wants nothing more exotic than the home comforts of a nice apartment, an eventually earned university degree, and perhaps someday a family.
Then, one fateful night during Mardi Gras, she runs again into the handsome, brave Tariq, who was first seen earlier in the day rescuing her girlfriend Wilder’s son from a riptide. One thing leads to another and they end the evening snorting cocaine off each other’s naughty bits before a fully throbbing and deeply purple sex scene that Ian McEwen’s newlyweds in On Chesil Beach could not have begun to imagine (see review below). The next morning Gina awakes, spent and buzzy,to find Tariq gone and her name and face on the television as a suspected accomplice to unspeakable terrorist acts committed by Tariq. The question driving the novel from there is a thoroughly postmodern version of the classic: what’s a girl to do?
While exploring her increasingly desperate options in town and a time without pity, the story is one that holds a criminally harsh and yet accurate mirror up to our post 9/11 culture of mediated bad girl celebrity, political ambition, police collusion, and the manipulation and cost of public fear.
Highly recommended for long plane or train rides.
Aside: This is the first novel I’ve read by Flanagan, and I acquired it on discount from Costco in anticipation of a fast read for a long plane ride. Having read it, I would gladly have paid full price.
