The Garden of Last Days

I was reading Parade magazine one Sunday and in the Recommended Reading section, this novel was written up. I wasn't that interested in it until the brief article used a bullet-proof phrase that will hook me every time - 9/11. The novel is set in Florida a few days before 9/11 and chronicles the seemingly unrelated lives of 4 people. I didn't care for writing style ( not much dialogue, mostly thoughts and actions of the characters) and I thought the inter-connections of the characters would be less transparent. Perhaps if I hadn't read about it beforehand, that might of made a difference. When I finished it, I was very under-whelmed. Maybe all the discussion between the fanatic Muslim and the stripper he spends most of an evening with was just too "deep" for me, though I doubt it.