Caroline's Reviews > The Submission

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Not only a wonderful book, but a book lauded with some outstanding reviews, five of which I list here..... I won’t be doing a review as such. It has all been said, and so much better than I can say it.

Jeanette (Netterooski)
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Teresa Lukey
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Michael Leccese
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Ed Z
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Lisa Eckstein
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

(I am going to do some bare bones write up notes as an aide memoire for my own use...)

Characters:
Mo (Mohammad Khan. ) Architect who submitted the winning entry for the competition to design a memorial for 9/11 at the World Trade Centre site. Muslim. Born in Virginia. He is sophisticated, and cool, cool, cool.
Claire Burwell – On the committee. Her role is to represent widows and widowers. Laywer. Harvard graduate. Attractive.
Paul Rubin – Chairman of committee. Sophisticated. Politically astute. Charming.
Sean Gallagher. Founder of the Memorial Support Committee. His brother, a fireman, died in 9/11. He’s passionate activist for issues arising from 9/11. Blinkered and angry.
Asma Anwar – Her Muslim husband was killed in 9/11. They originally came from Bangladeshi. She lives in Brooklyn, in a part known as ‘Little Dhaka’.
Geraldine Bitman – NY governor. Pulls strings behind the scenes.
Alyssa Spier – gutter journalist doing guttery things throughout the novel.

I liked Waldman's writing, herewith some snips:

‘They wandered up Third Avenue, the Empire State building a lantern held aloft to light their way.’

‘She entered and warmed the room like a small sun, and in her absence both he and the furniture seemed to be waiting to be brought to life.’

‘Mrs. Mahmoud slurped her tea and belched politely. She had twenty years, forty pounds, and several hundred gray hairs on Asma. Her talk was a solid object that filled the room, confining Asma to a tiny space.’

‘Like a junkie’s, her addiction had progressed from reading the news, to reporting it, to breaking it, then – the crack cocaine of her business – to shaping it.

What I liked most about the book...

The complexity of it – of the situation, the plot, the characters. It was fantastically real.
I also felt I learnt about a lot more about cheap journalism.

New words Waldman used that I couldn’t find in my old Chambers Dictionary....or at least not in the context she used them.
Ursine, manorexic, contrarian, bloviate, dhimmitude, retread.