" Reviewers have trashed this book by one of my favorite authors, but it's not as bad as they've said. It helps that the reader of the audio version is terrific. He gives interesting but not overdone voices to the main character, an Islamic convert who's the son of an absent Egyptian immigrant father & an Irish American mother as well as to the other characters, including a secular Jewish disillusioned public school guidance counsellor and his fat wife, a female African American classmate who tries to befriend our hero, and a Lebanese American furniture store owner & his son. This list, though, betrays the novel's great flaw: its cast of characters are all types rather than real characters. (The "fat wife" is a particularly offensive stereotype.) Moreover, the older characters--& even some of the younger ones--give voice to an annoying grumpiness about developments in American culture. "
— Marvin, 11/11/2013