Too Many Books, Too Little Time

While the events of 9/11 are never specifically mentioned, The Submission is the story of New York City’s attempt to construct a memorial to the thousands who died in a horrific attack perpetrated by Muslim terrorists.

The novel opens as the jury selected to judge submissions for the memorial come to a consensus on the design. The jury is made up of a variety of stakeholders: community leaders, artists, and a single family member of one of those killed in the attack. This particular juror, Claire Burwell, has lost her husband. Representing all the families that have lost loved ones, she plays a particularly vocal – and privileged – role in the final selection, and sways the jury to support her choice: a walled garden that includes a pavilion for contemplation, intersecting canals, and steel trees constructed from the salvaged scraps of the wreckage.

The rules require that the jury view the submissions “blind,” with no knowledge of the designer and his/her background. When the decision is made and the designer revealed, it turns out to be an American-born Muslim named Mohammad Kahn. Kahn, who goes by the nickname “Mo”, is a non-practicing Muslim; born, raised, and educated in the U.S.A.

As might be expected, the selection of a design submitted by a Muslim sets off a firestorm of controversy, and it is around this controversy that the story evolves.Waldman has brought in a wide variety of voices –  families of victims, politicians, Muslims, journalists – to represent the competing factions of the controversy, and it is in these voices that the tension and interest lie.

Anyone who remembers the outcry against the building of a Muslim community center near the site of Ground Zero has a pretty good idea where this story is going, but that doesn’t dilute the propulsion of emotion that Waldman builds through the first half of her story. She does an excellent job of representing all points of view and raising sides to the issue that were new to me and may be to you, also. If she continued to press points that had been adequately covered, sometimes bordering on redundancy, I believe it was only to bring resolution to the large cast of characters.

The writing is sometimes overwrought, and Waldman often stretches for metaphors that don’t quite work (my favorite: “She ate ramen noodles from the vending matching, their texture just a few molecular recombinations from the Styrofoam cup containing them.” Ouch!)

Nevertheless, the subject matter and points raised are compelling, the controversy one that will force you to re-examine your own biases. . . all in all, a good exercise in understanding others’ points of view.

Grade: B

Although I had expected to read only 100 pages of this book, the August reading selection for my book club, so many people put comments on my blog about how much they liked it, I decided to commit to reading it all. I have to say that right around page 100 it began to draw me in, so I may have finished it anyway. However, the enthusiastic reviews that it received from other readers was a great incentive.

A number of reviews compared this novel to some of the great gothic novels: Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Woman in White to name a few. That, in my opinion, was a bit of an oversell, but I can easily see why so many people enjoyed this book.

The Thirteenth Tale is written as a story within a story. The “frame” is the tale of a young woman, Margaret Lea, who is contacted by Vida Winter, a famous author, to write her biography. Margaret doesn’t seem to be the most logical choice since she has never written a biography, but she has written biographical essays, most notably one on a pair of brothers who co-authored a diary. It was this essay that led Ms. Winter to Margaret in the belief that Margaret had a special interest in siblings.

The story within the frame is the life of not only Vida Winter, née Adeline Angelfield, but her twin sister, Emmaline. Both Margaret and Ms. Winter have dark secrets in their past which comprise the mystery that unfolds in their work together. To give you more information would deprive you of the pleasure of reading this book.  

Vida Winter’s story is the story worth telling and, for me, should be the only story told. The artificial frame of Margaret’s life in her parent’s sad home, her own secret past, etc. is a distraction that drags the story down. Setterfield might well have done better to tell the straightforward story of the Angelfields without the unsuccessful attempt to wrap a mystery within a mystery. I’m really sorry, fellow bloggers who loved this book, but that just didn’t work for me. I found myself impatiently skimming all of the “modern day” (although the author was unnecessarily coy about the exact time period) events in order to get back to the more interesting family history of the Angelfields.

Further, I have maintained my impression that the book is wordy and over-written. I’ve given one example in my previous blog about this novel. I could give countless more, but I’ll stick with just this one:

At Miss Winter’s house I never looked at the clock. For seconds I had words, minutes were lines of pencil script. Eleven words to the line, twenty-three lines to the page was my new chronometry. At regular intervals I stopped to turn the handle of the pencil sharpener and watch curls of lead-edged wood dangle their way to the wastepaper basket; these pauses marked my “hours.”

Strangely, there is much less of this pointless verbosity within Ms Winter’s part of the story. It is more direct, more interesting, and builds upon itself in a much more satisfying way. If that were true for the entire novel, I would have enjoyed it much more.

Grade: C-

For the uninitiated, every Friday Crazy-for-Books hosts the “Book Blogger Hop, “a place just for book bloggers and readers to connect and find new book-related blogs that we may be missing out on.” It’s a great opportunity to learn about and explore book blogs that may be new to you. I’ve found many, many great blogs by participating in The Hop.

To get things rolling, Crazy-for-Books also posts a weekly question. This week’s question is:

TELL US ABOUT THE BOOK YOU ARE CURRENTLY READING.

I’ve just begun The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. When I say “just begun,” I mean that I am literally only on about page 30, so all impressions are very tentative.

The book is billed as a “gothic tale.” If it lives up to the comparisons to Rebecca, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, I’m prepared to like it. It’s probably not a book I would have selected myself, but it is the current selection for my book club so I’ll give it my best effort. I have a rule of thumb that I will read 100 pages of nearly anything. If I’m not interested by page 101, I move on to the next book. But blogger Books et al posted a comment here saying that this is one of her favorite books, and we share some favorites, so that gives me hope.

If I’m sounding less than enthusiastic, it’s because the small amount I’ve read suffers from one flaw that can sometimes be fatal for me – it seems to be seriously over-written. A sample of this is in the narrator’s description of a letter she has received:

The crisp-cornered envelope, puffed up with its thickly folded contents, was addressed in a hand that must have given the postman a certain amount of trouble. Although the style of the writing was old-fashioned, with its heavily embellished capitals and curly flourishes, my first impression was that it had been written by a child. The letters seemed untrained. Their uneven strokes either faded into nothing or were  heavily etched into the paper. There was no sense of flow in the letters that spelled out my name.

All this, just to say she received a letter addressed in a childish hand.

I’ll honor my commitment to 100 pages and hope that the story compensates for the style. Come back in a week or so to find out!