Usually, whenever I start the month I have no clue what that month’s pick will be. I run down a list of books I’ve read in the last six months (or am currently reading) and narrow down to one I think is the strongest for that month. None of that is true for Amy Waldman’s “The Submission,” an amazing novel I read earlier in the year and have been saving until September. The reason? It is, hands down, the best novel written that deals with September 11th.
“The Submission” takes its title from a contest to design the 9/11 memorial that will be built on ground zero. The selection committee (all very moneyed, with Clare, a wealthy 9/11 widow, being one of the most influential voices) picks a fairly straightforward but beautiful/hopeful garden as the winning design. The “problem” is that the winning designer is named Mohammed Khan, or, as the governor’s righthand man puts it, “He’s a fucking Muslim!”
What follows is a panoramic, public relations shit storm where everyone takes a side, and none of those sides is entirely selfless. The novel expertly explores how even an issue that, let’s be honest, doesn’t really affect most people can get spun around, blown up by a desperate media, and put through the bored yet inflamed kaleidoscope of the internet, where everyone has a snap viewpoint…even if they don’t know anything about the issue. The black sheep brother of a dead 9/11 fire fighter is crusading against it, the leader of an Islamic Anti-Defamation Group is publicizing for it, a conservative bigot-bimbo is working it into a media quest, an ambitious New York governor may spin it into a platform for her presidential aspirations, and a tabloid reporter is using it.
The fact that Waldman can represent the artificial “outrage” of media figures in a completely organic way—–charting how a man-made “issue” spreads like a virus—–is an impressive trick. The fact that she can do it while accurately working all sides of the issue, finding the humanity in even the most irredeemable characters is nothing short of a miracle.
By the end, even Mohammed Khan (the designer who refuses to take any easy-outs, insulted by the questions surrounding his ethnicity, even as he knows he’s making things harder by not answering them) isn’t totally sympathetic nor anywhere near unsympathetic; neither is the grieving and open minded, but weak-willed Clare. It takes a great writer to make a topic like the selection of a 9/11 memorial pop with this much life, intelligence, humor, and honesty. And it takes a master to insert dozens of equally complex characters into that narrative. I believe Amy Waldman to be one such master.
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