Amy Waldman

Two years after 9/11, a jury meets in Gracie Mansion to vote on the winning design of a Ground Zero memorial, to commemorate the people who were killed on that horrible day. The members, selected by the governor of New York, have narrowed the 5000 anonymous entries to two, and after some arm twisting and haggling, they choose a contemplative walled garden over an imposing black granite slab. After the jury makes its final decision, its members learn the identity of the designer: Mohammed show more (Mo) Khan, a highly respected and award-winning architect, born in the United States, educated at Virginia and Yale—and a Muslim of Pakistani descent. The jury members are shocked at the news, most accept it without comment, but several openly seek to disqualify the architect based on his religion, in the belief that the families of those killed on 9/11 and "Middle America" will reject the garden and refuse to donate funds towards its completion. In 2003 the city and the nation are still recovering from the shock of that day, and many Americans harbor deep bitterness and hatred toward all Muslims, regardless of their beliefs.

Claire Burwell is a lawyer who was selected by the governor to represent the families, as her husband, a wealthy businessman, died on that day. She was the most vocal and passionate supporter of the garden, but after Khan's identity is leaked to an unscrupulous and ruthless New York Post reporter, Claire is forced to defend her decision to the families, the right-wing media, and the governor, who sees this crisis as an opportunity to make herself more attractive to Middle America by expressing her opposition to the jury's decision. At the same time, Khan, a proud man who does not practice his religion but is not beneath using the Muslim community to bolster his claim, refuses to withdraw his name from the competition, change his design, or provide assurance to Burwell and those who support him that the memorial is not a "martyrs' garden", one which honors the hijackers instead of those who were killed by them.

Other characters add to the drama and tension, most notably Alyssa Spier, the Post reporter who first broke the story and continues to influence developments through her incendiary and inaccurate columns; Sean Gallagher, an insecure ne'er-do-well whose brother was a firefighter who died on 9/11, who finds purpose in vehemently and violently protesting the jury's decision; and Asma Anwar, a Bangladeshi Muslim woman whose husband also died that day, and vows to honor his memory by supporting Khan's garden.

The Submission is a riveting story, which became progressively better toward its climax. Several of its characters, particularly the lesser ones, seemed stereotypical and were less than fully developed, and the motivations of the two key characters, Claire and Mo, were not well explained, particularly in their key confrontation toward the end of the book, which kept this from being a groundbreaking and outstanding novel. However, this is easily the best book written about 9/11 or its aftermath that I've read, and I would highly recommend it to everyone. show less

Yeah...so...wow! (This is my review, as it appeared on Bookbrowse.com, October 5th, 2011.)

First time novelist, Amy Waldman, has created a gut-punch of a novel in The Submission, a tale that wonders: What would happen if the architectural design competition for the World Trade Center 9/11 Memorial was won by an American-Muslim?

The story opens two years after the attacks, with a jury deliberating over the two finalists in the Memorial Design competition - The Void and The Garden. The jury, show more after very tense and prolonged deliberations, finally selects its winner: The Garden. It is at this point the identity of the designer is revealed, an architect named Mohammad (Mo) Khan.

Chaos, of course, ensues as Khan's identity as an American-Muslim, is leaked to the media and citizens. Special interest groups and pundits argue for and against the fitness of both the individual and his design. Claire Burwell, whose husband died on September 11th, is a member of the jury as a representative of the families who lost loved ones in the attacks. Throughout the blind competition (the identities of those who submitted designs were kept secret), Claire was the most vocal champion for The Garden, feeling the concept offered the strongest opportunity for healing and reflection while honoring those who died. She is then thrust into an awkward and precarious position of balancing her belief in the winning design with the emotional and confrontational outbursts from the families she was supposed to be representing.

Waldman has created something I really love when reading fiction - unreliable narrators. Several main characters - Claire Burwell, Mo Khan, and Sean Gallagher - dig their heels in, waver, reevaluate themselves and others, and cause rippling consequences. Claire has long anchored her identity in liberal social thinking but has never really had to examine her convictions. Mo is arrogant and unknowable in his aloofness. He refuses, on the basis of being a free American citizen, to answer questions about his intentions with his design. This avoidance, on principle, leaves many confused and paranoid.

Sean lost his firefighter brother, Patrick, in the attacks and also lost himself. He felt he was never good enough growing up and had never really known his place in the world - until he began speaking out about his brother's death. But is that enough to give his own life meaning? All of these characters are tested and pushed to reassess their ways of thinking. Trying to make a difference in the world - which all three are striving to do - is not something that can be undertaken without fully knowing one's self.

At its heart, The Submission is a tale of caution; if you think you know yourself, please, think again. Readers are taken through a trifecta of large issues: grief, ambition, and prejudice. And early in the novel, a particular quote slapped me in the face: "You couldn't call yourself an American if you hadn't, in solidarity, watched your fellow Americans being pulverized, yet what kind of America did watching create?" It is an inescapable question. The media allowed for interminable full access, nonstop watching and reading at our disposal. Talking heads from television infiltrated our own minds. Special interest groups tore at our heartstrings. Pundits swayed our thinking this way and that. Throughout, there was never any disagreement that 9/11 was a domestic tragedy of global significance. A national embrace brought families who lost loved ones to our collective chest in an effort to support them and keep them safe. And yet. And yet there were so many competing interests fighting and often losing sight of the reason for the heightened passions and positions - the people who lost their lives.

The very title of this novel says a lot. Each character we meet is asked to submit - whether to alter a long-held belief, upend their moral center, or open a door to a stranger. The Submission also represents the architectural design Mohammad submits in hopes of creating an important work. Within a religious context, the word "muslim" means "one who voluntarily submits or surrenders to God's will." Around one simple word, so much turns. And as with Waldman's novel, a world evolves around one simple concept.

The author, a former journalist for The New York Times, and their South Asia Bureau co-chief for over three years, was in Manhattan on the the day of the attacks in 2001, and she spent the following six weeks reporting on the aftermath. Several years ago - while talking with a friend about the controversy Maya Lin endured when, in 1981, her Vietnam Veteran's Memorial design was selected through open competition - Waldman supposed that a Muslim-American planning the WTC Memorial would be a modern equivalent situation. And so, The Submission was born, as was her career as a novelist.

She has stated that in writing a story about 9/11, she "was just interested in looking at the variety of experiences and the grief. To tell the story from multiple perspectives." Waldman succeeds in achieving this goal beautifully with her debut novel; through her gifted prose and fully realized characters, she has created a very powerful reading experience. show less

The premise is intriguing. A contest is held to select a design for a 9/11 memorial where the two towers stood. The winner, a design for a garden, is chosen anonymously, but once it has been selected, they realize the designer is Muslim and there is an immediate outcry from the public.

The cast of characters is diverse. There’s Paul, a Jewish lawyer who is in charge of the jury that selects the design for the memorial. Then we have Mohammad Khan, the architect whose design is chosen. He show more was born in Virginia and is an American. Asma is the widow of a man who was killed in the two towers on 9/11. She is living in America illegally, but her son was born in the USA.

Claire is also a 9/11 widow and is a member of the jury that selects the memorial design and is the garden’s earliest advocate. Alyssa is a reporter who continually weasels her way into each breaking story, throwing gas on the fire. Sean lost his brother on 9/11, but the tragedy has finally given him some focus in life. He now lends his time and energy to 9/11 causes.

The book’s greatest strength is that it shows the issue from such wonderfully different perspectives. Allowing the readers to see it from so many angles fleshing out the controversy and gives it real weight. We meet a wide variety of people from diverse walks of life. Seeing it through their eyes opens our own. Writing it this way is essential to make the story work. It becomes a stepping stone to open discussions instead of preaching one view point at us. There is no hero or villain, just people struggling with an impossible situation where emotions are raw with grief and everyone is tense.

The controversy isn't really about his design, it's about his religion. As one reporter thinks,

“No one cared about the design, didn’t her get that?”

I was really glad that Mo wasn’t turned into a saint that’s simply caught in the cross hairs. I thinks it’s important he feels like a real person, flawed, like anyone else, with selfish thoughts and a flaring temper. He’s a normal guy with ambitions. The only subplot I wasn't a fan of was Sean's. I felt like his whole story was weak and uninteresting.

SPOILERS

For me, it was crucial that the book end the way it did. If it had ended in the midst of the pressure and stress of the situation, I don’t think it would have meant so much to me. I needed to know what the characters felt about the situation once they had some distance from it and they weren’t caught up in the fury of the events. I wanted to know what happened to Asma’s son and what he thought about what happened. Ending it 20 years later gave me closure and felt just right.

SPOILERS OVER

The book makes you wonder what you would do in this situation. It’s not black and white and there’s no clear right and wrong because there are so many feelings involved. One New Yorker (in the book) talks about his mind thinking one thing and his heart feeling another, he’s ashamed to feel suspicious, but he can’t help it. What is America if not a melting pot that defies labels? When you mix such incredibly different cultures together, you’re bound to have underlying prejudices based on centuries of feuds. The plot also makes you look at what your own assumptions about people are and it makes you question how easily you are swayed by sensational news coverage.

I think this is a wonderful book, one of my favorites so far this year. I don’t think this is a book that everyone will enjoy. It’s tense and political. I think you could also say it manipulates your emotions, but for me, it was excellent.

“‘It’s falling down, it’s falling down,’the nursery-rhyme words, then the mobile network went dead. ‘Hello? Hello? Honey?’ all around, then a silence of Pompeian density.”

“Jealousy clings to love’s underside like bats to a bridge.”

“… which had seemed so monumental at the time, had turned out to be only a small fragment of the mosaic of his life.”

“Perhaps this was the secret to being at peace: want nothing but what is given to you.” show less

For this story to work, we all have to cast our minds back to 2003, a scant two years after the 9/11 attacks, and remember how raw those attacks still felt. Only then can we all ask ourselves the question: would I have supported a memorial designed by a secular Muslim-American if it had been chosen under these circumstances? Hopefully, we can all answer honestly that we would have. And if perhaps we wouldn't have then, certainly with the distance of additional decade, we can all say we would show more now. But that's almost beside the point because Waldman gives us multiple points of view without forcing us to choose.

Waldman recreates the mood of post-9/11 New York City without pulling her punches. Numerous sides get their share of the story-telling: the widow who tries to be fair-minded; politicos who try to pander to all sides without, of course, ever appearing to; the brother of a firefighter who has made being anti-Islam his personal cause; other anti-Islamists who aren't afraid to piggy-back on the fear of the time, even though they didn't lose anyone in the attacks; the reporter who get the leak about the story of the Muslim who won the anonymous competition to design the 9/11 memorial. If some of these sides are presented more as caricatures than fully fleshed-out characters, that's almost beside the point too as this is a not a character-driven story.

This book has other flaws, perhaps the biggest one being that too many things seem to be beside the point, including things like the motivation of the person who leaked the news about the designer of the memorial, and whether anyone ever found out who it was. But Waldman does well to keep her story focused on what does matter - the conflicts, internal and external that arise in a situation like this. Overall, this is a very well written and thoughtful piece of fiction that could all too easily have been non-fiction, which is something we would all do well to remember. show less