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A review by jeannemixon
The Submission by Amy Waldman
5.0
This book is excruciating to read. Waldman does a brilliant job of bringing everything back -- the sights, smells, arguments, hatreds from 9/11. She posits a competition to create a memorial to the victims of 9/11 that, Maya Lin style, is won by a very conflicted secular American born Muslim. The novel is absolutely 100 percent credible. There are twists and turns, some telegraphed most not, that keep the novel moving like a runaway train. At the same time, I was reading between my fingers because it so horrible, the visceral hatred and political maneuvering.
We were in New Jersey when the towers fell and could smell the smoke from our house. Instant memorials sprang up everywhere there were overlooks with the Manhattan skyline. At one, a French tourist came up to me and said our people stand with you. But of course our bumbling frat boy president squandered all that goodwill when he attacked the wrong country. None of that is in the book, but it all burbles up again as you read -- the incredible administrative incompetence and lack of leadership, the irrational hatred of Muslims (and Sikhs who were confused with Muslims), the confusion about who or what had done this and then the realization that our government had been told by the outgoing Clinton administration who to watch and Bush had laughed it off.
Of course a lot of people in New Jersey were affected by 9/11. I knew a kid whose father was killed and he insisted on sitting with his younger sister during lunch because he had said goodbye to his father in the morning and his father never returned and he had trouble recovering from that. All that sorrow is revived by the book, all the confusion about why here? Why the World Trade towers?
In some ways, those emotions are too powerful which is why the book is so hard to read. In an alchemical trick, Trump seems to have turned that hatred that was so focused on Muslims into an equally visceral hatred of Hispanics. He toyed with anti Muslim sentiment early on in his presidency and has since moved on to a new target. The book also captures how anti Muslim sentiment has largely moved on. But I like to protect myself against the news today, not reading the stories that will upset me too much, and I felt the same way about this book -- I read it, but I don't seek out this kind of book that causes too much raw anger against the government and the gratuitous haters because you see the effects everywhere and it is draining not to be able to do much about it but vote for a side I can believe in.
So I guess the end thought is beware. This is a book that will throw you back into that horrible feeling of anger and loss and powerlessness that was never really resolved. We never did build something even as simple as a memorial garden and I think she is arguing here that we should have and I think she is right.
We were in New Jersey when the towers fell and could smell the smoke from our house. Instant memorials sprang up everywhere there were overlooks with the Manhattan skyline. At one, a French tourist came up to me and said our people stand with you. But of course our bumbling frat boy president squandered all that goodwill when he attacked the wrong country. None of that is in the book, but it all burbles up again as you read -- the incredible administrative incompetence and lack of leadership, the irrational hatred of Muslims (and Sikhs who were confused with Muslims), the confusion about who or what had done this and then the realization that our government had been told by the outgoing Clinton administration who to watch and Bush had laughed it off.
Of course a lot of people in New Jersey were affected by 9/11. I knew a kid whose father was killed and he insisted on sitting with his younger sister during lunch because he had said goodbye to his father in the morning and his father never returned and he had trouble recovering from that. All that sorrow is revived by the book, all the confusion about why here? Why the World Trade towers?
In some ways, those emotions are too powerful which is why the book is so hard to read. In an alchemical trick, Trump seems to have turned that hatred that was so focused on Muslims into an equally visceral hatred of Hispanics. He toyed with anti Muslim sentiment early on in his presidency and has since moved on to a new target. The book also captures how anti Muslim sentiment has largely moved on. But I like to protect myself against the news today, not reading the stories that will upset me too much, and I felt the same way about this book -- I read it, but I don't seek out this kind of book that causes too much raw anger against the government and the gratuitous haters because you see the effects everywhere and it is draining not to be able to do much about it but vote for a side I can believe in.
So I guess the end thought is beware. This is a book that will throw you back into that horrible feeling of anger and loss and powerlessness that was never really resolved. We never did build something even as simple as a memorial garden and I think she is arguing here that we should have and I think she is right.