This is disgusting:
A new novel for teenagers about a mixed-race girl who trains to become a terrorist suicide bomber has become a bestseller in mainstream bookshops since its publication a month ago.
Checkmate, by the award-winning children’s writer Malorie Blackman, features a heroine who is groomed by militant members of an oppressed ethnic group in an unspecified country – but there are many clues to it being Britain – to wear a vest bomb to kill a senior politician in a suicide mission on her 16th birthday.
Far from stoking controversy after the London bombings, the book looks set to become a sensation, with experts and children saying that Checkmate fulfils teenagers’ need for contemporary, gritty fiction.
In four weeks, the book has risen to second place on Waterstone’s teen fiction sales list. Last week, it was 19th on Amazon’s list of bestselling books across all genres and staff of Books Etc reported yesterday that it was “flying off the shelves” and was being outsold only by Harry Potter and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy in the teenage market.
The glorification of suicide bombings is in and of itself disturbing enough, but also troubling is that you just know that the someone somewhere will be trying to have this book banned. They like to throw pies in the faces of celebrities in Europe. I suggest they make one for Ms. Blackman.
And google turned up this truly bizarre fetish when I searched for pie+in+the+face+England.
And no, I have not read the book- I am (perhaps foolishly) relying on the report I linked to…
*** Update ***
Some debate about my use of the word ‘glorification.’ Fair enough.
Bob
How about all those WWII movies where the guy jumps on a hand grenade so that his comrades can kill more of the enemy?
How about anyone who willingly gives up his or her life in order to enable allies to kill enemies?
That’s what war is all about. Should kids be encouraged to give up their lives in a war? I’ve been against military recruiting on high school campuses too.
wd
Just a question, have you read the book?
I’m just reaching here, and haven’t read it myself, and know glorification of suicide bombing is terminably not cool, but I can’t help thinking after reading this post about a book called The Gulag Archipelago (which I did read) that was probably just as surely denounced. Perhaps they denounced it because of the writer’s literary skill than because of the content?
CaseyL
John, the author doesn’t seem like a hack going for sensationalism: this is the final book in a trilogy about an alternate-England, and the manuscript was submitted long before the 7/7 bombings. I’d have to read the book, or a detailed review of it, to know if the suicide bomber is “glorified” or is presented as a cautionary tale about racism, the destruction of a family, and how terrorists prey on the victims thereof.
I know it can be infuriating to hear that some social conditions can cause terrorism, or make people more inclined to nihilism. It would be ever so much more comforting to believe that terrorism is a sui generis form of evil, and suicide bombers are nothing more than sucklings at Satan’s bosom.
But that notion might not be accurate.
Ms. Blackman’s readers are youngsters, mostly; and dramatic, tragic angst is part and parcel of adolescence. The “WoT’ is being very badly fought, and the rhetoric surrounding it is deeply dishonest. Teenagers pick up on stuff like that. Once a teenager catches trusted authority figures in one kind of lie, they tend to question everything that authority figure ever told them.
So here they are, their country fighting a discredited war that, one, most Brits didn’t support from the git-go; and, two, is now blowing back on them in terrible ways – not just the terrorist bombings, but the effect those bombings are having on British society and racial/ethni issues.
It’s a subject matter that cries out for someone, somewhere, to talk about in terms that mean something to the teen audience. Bombastic political speech isn’t going to do any good, and neither is denouncing writers who do try to grapple with it.
Read the book first. If it is a stirring paegn to revolution, a recruiting job for suicide bombers, then Blackman deserves calumny. But if it’s a careful story about a girl beset by events she has no control over, and how she is used by people with their own agendas, and how she’s caught in a downward spiral – then it’s something youngsters should be reading. It might, for example, make them less vulnerable to terrorist recruiters.
wd
Oops, I quit reading after “truly bizarre fetish”, I see you haven’t read the book either.
Casey makes a good point, “It’s a subject matter that cries out for someone, somewhere, to talk about in terms that mean something to the teen audience”, and if it requires a fictional protagonist to shed light on what goes on in the head of this particular character (so long as it’s not clearly advocating suicide or bombing), then much the better.
The 9-11 commission hinted at a lack of imagination in our efforts to come to grips with terrorism, if we cannot address the issue through fiction, I suppose that is just one more avenue of imagination that is severed from the tree of understanding. Getting kids to read, especially about events that may help them appreciate alternate interpretations of their own reality, is, in my view a net good.
Third top seller? Fine, get the kids thinking about the modern world. I can only imagine how book banning individuals would react if this were a movie or a TV show, which requires so much less thought to consume than a book.
TallDave
I’m not the least bit surprised. Hell, Mein Kamp is still fashionable in some Arab capitals.
W.B. Reeves
Is something missing here? Where did you get the idea that the book “glorifies” suicide bombers? There’s nothing about that in the exerpt nor, as far as I can see, in the full article either. Or is it just the fact that the protagonist is a would be terrorist?
If the issue is having a protagonist that does evil things, then Dostoevsky and numerous others are in the same bag.
TallDave
Should kids be encouraged to give up their lives in a war?
Well, people had kids in 1941 too you know. What if none of them wanted to risk in dying in a war?
Gary Farber
“And no, I have not read the book- I am (perhaps foolishly) relying on the report I linked to…”
Which was the point I was going to make. Condemning a book that one hasn’t read is idiotic. Period. Full stop. End of story. (I read about this story this morning, and was disappointed that Betsy Newmark stopped having comments, and thus I didn’t point this out to her [no, I didn’t care enough to e-mail her].)
Gary Farber
Oh, and where on earth are you getting “glorifies” from? It’s not in the story. So from where?
But this goes back to condemning books without reading them. Wot a fine thing to do. Very responsible.
John Cole
I dunno, Gary. Maybe I got the idea from the story I linked to, where it contained the following statements:
And this:
Now, I in no way said the book should be banned or condemned, but I said I thought it was a disgusting topic matter, and not one I want teenagers dealing with. In my woirldview, anything that causes children to look at whetehr suicide bombers were ‘bullied’ is not a road I want to take. That is my taste, and I may well be wrong, but my viewpoint is no amount of bullying explains or excuses suicide bombings.
In fact, I even went one farther, showing displeasure with the idea that some WILL try to have the book banned, something I disprove of, and I still get a shit sandwich from you.
DougJ
Again, this shows that there must be limits on free speech. With rights come responsiblity. If people don’t exercise their right to free speech responsibly there can and should be consequences.
John Cole
And, as if on cue, DougJ.
Jeff G
If you stopped posting, John, I believe Gary would dry up and blow away…
mario
John baby, I think you blew this one.
Unless Amazon.com has been infiltrated by islamo-fascists, you’re way off base (as is the article)
Jess
Of course not, and I doubt if any of your readers would be so simplistic to suggest such a thing. But maybe you’re looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope; maybe the point is that extreme bullying can lead to all kinds of nasty results (such as Columbine, for example), and that we should be making a concerted effort to protect our youth from abusive and violent situations that can warp them into violent abusers themselves. Just an idea.
John Cole
I canhandle blowing it,and I wil admit it if I have, but I hate the tone that I intentionally get shit wrong.
W.B. Reeves
There’s a lot of bad faith and paranoia in the wind John. It’s taking its toll. I remember the crap that was served up when you criticized the Theocrats. Its always hard to bear attacks on one’s integrity. Particularly when they’re full of shit.
Richard Bottoms
I saw this movie once. It was about a young man who helps overthrow a corrupt government going so far as to blow up a very large military installation killing thousands.
Turns out he was on the right side. I think.
Dude even kissed his sister though.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Yikes. Heh, DougJ was on cue, wasn’t he?
frontinus
Calm, cautious reasoning? Did someone change my bookmark?
Oh wait, this isn’t about religion or Iraq. Pardon the interruption.
Geek, Esq.
It does raise my eyebrows, but given my profound disinterest in books aimed at adolescent girls, I think I’ll pass on reading and therefore commenting.
rreay
I’ll skip discussing Checkmate and say that I strongly recomend the trilogy that’s outselling it, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. The characters are children, but it’s not a childrens book.
Defense Guy
It’s ok, in this case you can replace corrupt with mind-numbingly evil. It was really more of a friendly peck, at least that’s how I choose to remember it.
Stormy70
Ditto.
Wrye
John isn’t intentionally getting shit wrong. Gut reactions are fair, and I think the quotes could be read in that way. I’ll just note that “a sensation” just means best-selling, and implies nothing about the book’s attitude to the subject matter.
Can we all agree that it would be disgusting *if* the book glorifies this, but it’s quite possibly a serious attempt to get at the how and why of child soldiers/assassins are exploited, recruited and used?
Like, say, this film?
Then Again Maybe I Won't
Ah how things have changed in 25 years. Back in the late 70’s the Religous Right was all up in arms about books written for teen age girls by the author Judy Blume. The book “Are you there God, it’s me Margaret” was trashed while the book “Go Ask Alice” a supposedly true story by “anonymous” was praised. Go Ask Alice was proven to be a fake. I think I will go re-read “Wifey” and touch myself inappropriately.