September 11 at the heart of two unusual novels

Another reason why Mohsin Hamid's novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist reminds me of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland: both center on the September 11th attacks on New York, and both have the unusual point of view of the foreign, noncitizen resident in New York and the effect of the attacks on his (and in Netherland also her) psyche. As in Netherland, the protagonist and narrator of Fundamentalist, a Pakistani born and U.S. educated 20ish man named Changez (echo of the French "to change" may be a slightly hidden meaning), is a wealthy young New Yorker, raking it in through his job at a consultant firm, whose world and world view changes dramatically upon the attacks. Changez, initially, feels both very privilege - highly educated, making far more money than he possibly can spend, very successful at his job, popular with friends - but also a bit of an outsider, as his mentor at the consulting firm - himself a working-class guy who worked his way through Princeton - keeps reminding him. And there are some very minor slights: some offhand insenstive remarks by his quasi-girlfriend's father, for example. Also, his relation with college mate and object of affection, Erica, is very odd, as she is completely fixated on former boyfriend who died of illness - she and Ch. seem to have no sexual relationship at all - and it's amazing how little this bothers him. After the attacks, things "change" for him: he feels himself suddenly an object of suspicion, forced through extensive security at airports, for example. None of this is really surprising to readers, and I'm not sure why this social suspicion would transform him into a "fundamentalist," a term not yet defined in the novel, but the story is moving along at a steady pace with gradual accumulation of details building a full characterization, a full and rounded character, who is telling his story in his own words to an imagined listener, who seems to have no story to tell of his own. Of course the narrative is just a device - it's not realistic to imagine a near monologue of this length among strangers over tea in a cafe - even Conrad's long narrations are more credible, as they are carefully set up as a tale-telling, aboard a ship at night or in a club or whatever, a convention designed for silent apprehension, but the convention does make this tale more immediate and personal - if this were just written as a traditional first-person narrative, we would constantly be wondering why is he writing this, what propels him to do so, is it a confession, a jailhouse memoir, what? As it is structured, we know enough about the narrator's present status to trust him - as his listener does - but with wary attention.