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A review by skwinslow
The Submission by Amy Waldman
2.0
The premise of this book is so interesting: a jury votes on a memorial for the victims of the 9/11 attacks. All entries are anonymous, and after a winner is selected, the world learns that the design was submitted by an American Muslim.
Unfortunately, what I thought would be such a compelling book didn't really get any more interesting than the book jacket. The story raised all the issues one would expect; really, you could go ahead and have the book club discussion just based on the book jacket alone. The characters never came to life for me, and the writing reminded me of Tom Perotta's The Abstinence Teacher -- flat and full of caricatures. I actually considered abandoning this about a hundred pages in -- life is short and full of too many wonderful books -- but it read quickly and isn't a long book, so I stuck it out. And the second half was actually much better than the first, with a fairly good ending, but nowhere did it live up to my expectations after reading so many reviews about what a beautifully-written novel this is.
Unfortunately, what I thought would be such a compelling book didn't really get any more interesting than the book jacket. The story raised all the issues one would expect; really, you could go ahead and have the book club discussion just based on the book jacket alone. The characters never came to life for me, and the writing reminded me of Tom Perotta's The Abstinence Teacher -- flat and full of caricatures. I actually considered abandoning this about a hundred pages in -- life is short and full of too many wonderful books -- but it read quickly and isn't a long book, so I stuck it out. And the second half was actually much better than the first, with a fairly good ending, but nowhere did it live up to my expectations after reading so many reviews about what a beautifully-written novel this is.