Hmmm. It's ten years since 9/11 but few people have dared to write about it. Perhaps because memories are still so vivid, because the pictures taken by 24 hour news coverage will endure for longer than radio reports and novels. Don DeLillo is one of those who has tried with this novel, but he attains limited success. He tells a tangled story of lives directly affected by the events of that day. The lead story of Keith, the man who escapes the Towers and runs to his estranged wife, is the strongest of the three. Or at least it starts that way. He starts to rebuild their broken relationship, whilst simultaneously having a brief affair with another survivor who's briefcase he rescued from the building. It also describes his wife, her relationship with their young son Justin, and her worries about memory and dementia. Finally, there is the utterly random tale of Hammad, one of the young men who becomes a terrorist. This sits least well with the rest of the novel - it tries to show a man in conflict, but too little attention is paid and the whole story comes off as extremely shallow.

There was no real warmth in the book, and as Keith leaves his job to take up professional gambling as a metaphor for something or other, it really does drag. I whipped through the first half of the book, and majorly struggled with the second. An interesting premise, but a poor execution. I expect better from DeLillo.