The Submission

The Submission (#142) by Amy Waldman sparked a great conversation at my Literary Circle.  This book has been promoted as "perhaps the defining novel about 9/11".  If you remember that day (and who does not in America?) there will be many things that will resonate in the attitudes and actions of the characters, as well as an equal number of things that make you ask yourself "Could I ever have thought this way?" 

The plot of the novel concerns a design competition for a 9/11 memorial to be built at the site of the World Trade Towers two years later.  The jury of artists and one token family member representative has narrowed the choice down to two anymous entries.  Claire, the family representative, comes down strongly in favor of a garden design.  After this memorial proposal is chosen, the name of the architect is revealed: Mohammed Khan.  How the jury, the architect himself, the public, the press and politicians deal with this choice is the nucleus of the story. 

It's all too easy to put yourself in the place of many of the characters as they struggle to come to terms with their own prejudices, fears, and sense of loss.  All of the characters are flawed, though some are more sympathetic than others.  How do you peel through the moral and ethical layers when ambition and personal gain rear their ugly heads?  There is no happy ending in this book, but the author still manages to resolve things in a way that in the end is more positive than negative.

Several of us found ourselves reading faster and faster the further we got into the book.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, one of our book group members refused to finish the book because she thought it was so negative.  (We did convince her by the end of the evening that she had drawn the wrong conclusion by just reading the last few pages of the book, and that she needed to go back and read the whole thing.)  I was glad that the group's choice of this book forced me to read about this sensitive subject.  It's a book that will stay with me for a long time.