In the Name of God-- Paula Jolin

What may have been controversial is spelled-out and palatable in this book about a young woman's faith and her bend towards fundamentalism. At 17, Nadia is religious and a good student, not certain what her future holds. When the police arrest her beloved cousin, Nadia can no longer bear the injustice she sees around her-- Iraqi homes bombed, Palestinians killed, and poverty and cronyism in her home country of Syria. Her family doesn't know what to do about Nadia's growing detachment; Nadia doesn't know what to do with her anger. When she is enlisted in a bomb plot, Nadia discovers a sense of purpose and comes to a decision: she wants to be the detonator.

There are some things this book does very well. The setting-- time, place, political climate, public sentiment-- were familiar to me; it felt very right. I got the sense that Jolin was very careful in how she portrayed the characters, too, fleshing them out and showing their imperfect relationships with religion and with each other. This book seems very conscious of its role in introducing young readers to the Middle East, Islam, and fundamentalism without muddling the three.

While the book is ambitious in many regards, I found the plot slow. I didn't have any attachment to Nadia and her family, which didn't help; while they had some dimension as characters, they lacked emotional qualities. You can't really blame Nadia for her feelings, but it's hard to get attached to her. You also never really feel love for anyone else in her life; maybe it's because Nadia is always angry and never really shows attachment to anyone, but even her relationship with Fowzi seemed lackluster. Speaking those emotions would have only helped me better understand Nadia's choices, which don't hold up as well as they should.

I would be very interested to hear what young readers think of this book-- it has the potential to be challenging in all the right ways, if it's compelling enough to bring people on board.