PENGUIN The Runaways: The new ‘bold and probing novel’ you won’t be able to stop talking about

Fantastic book, fantastic author. Highly recommend!

Going past the fact that the jacket of this hardcover is gorgeous, this was a beautifully written novel. I think it's very necessary reading given the times we live in. As one of the reviews on the book state, this is indeed written with a big heart and a lot of empathy. Enjoyed it.

I think the review written by Lucy sums up my thinking about a lot of this book. It is certainly well written and, at times, quite beautiful. But I disagree with Lucy when she says that the story falls away around half way through. The second half of the novel, set in the desert of Iraq, is compelling stuff (sorry Lucy). It is nowhere near as graphic as some books I have read. In fact, I was a little surprised it wasn't more so but maybe that would have distracted from the human element. The three characters, especially the two boys, Sammy and Monty, came across as quite naive at times and also quite innocent, despite events towards the end of the book. The Runaways certainly makes you think. Although many young (and not so young) people have joined such terrorist groups as Isis, their reasons for doing so may not be as straightforward as we imagine. Individual circumstances play a major part in the decision-making. This novel should make you think about motives. It also suggests that our 'Western' way of life might be all some people need in order to become radicalised. A recent interview with Fatima Bhutto, in the Sunday Times Magazine, is worth reading. She says, "Radicalism is not about religion. That narrative is a lie." I encourage you to read this book - I would like to think it will be short-listed for the Man Booker Award later this year.

SPOILER ALERT I bought The Runaways after hearing Fatima Bhutto discuss the novel with Jeremy Scahill in a recent episode of Scahill’s podcast, Intercepted. The Runaways is entertaining, and I recommend it, but I was frustrated by the book’s uneven and unequal character development. As other reviews have noted, Anita Rose’s story has gaps that make her transformation jarring and puzzling. When I finished the book, I had several questions: Why did this Christian girl go to Iraq to wage jihad? How did she become so sexually bold [Layla taught Monty how to kiss (p. 287). Layla showed Monty how to touch her. Monty slipped his hands down Layla’s jeans, just as she’d instructed him (p. 314).]? Who was the TV station owner with her in the video, and how did their encounter happen? And what happened to her in Dubai? Evidently, her experience in Dubai was so unpleasant that she refused to return to Dubai when Ezra offered to fly her there business class. But Bhutto doesn’t reveal what happened to Anita after she visited the shopping mall. Is that when her encounter with the TV station owner happened, or did that happen in Karachi? I believe the novel would have been better if Bhutto had given more attention to Anita Rose’s story and had cut some pages from Sunny and Monty’s walk across the desert, which went from page 179 to 360, and which contained some flashbacks that I found unnecessary, such as the flashback of Monty’s sushi dinner with his parents (pp. 202 to 204). At page 260—more than halfway into the novel—Anita Rose tells Osama that “she had little idea what her own dreams might be.” Anita Rose’s dreams should have been clear to her and to the reader by that point in the novel. There were also some smaller distracting issues that I think an editor or proofreader should have caught. For example, I’m uncertain what’s happening in the sentence, “In the morning, at a more civilized hour, soldiers and boiled eggs, presented in ruby-encrusted cups, were served on the verandah.” (p. 30) When Bhutto mentions “scooters without any exhaust” (p. 325) and “motorcycles with no exhaust” (p. 409), does she mean electric two wheelers, or two wheelers without mufflers/silencers? When Sunny and Monty pause “for a late-afternoon break near a home pockmarked with bullet holes, . . . Monty walked around the structure, looking for evidence of a firefight, but aside from burn marks, there was nothing . . .” Weren’t the bullet holes evidence of a firefight? When Monty enters the room in which Layla is being beaten, “he sees Layla’s eyes widen. . . One of her eyes is ringed with broken skin and is sealed shut. . . Her one unruptured eye is brimming with tears.” How did her ruptured eye widen if it was sealed shut? Despite my frustration, I enjoyed The Runaways, and I'm considering reading Bhutto's first novel, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon.

Great idea but for the depth of the topic I would have preferred a more concrete plot