A Gesture Life by Chang Rae Lee

A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Profoundly moving story, 12 Mar 2006

By	kimbofo (London, UK)

Every so often you come across a book that makes you rejoice in the sheer beauty of the English language and the power of the novel to change your perspective on so many different things.

In A Gesture Life Chang-Rae Lee has delivered one of the most elegantly restrained pieces of fiction I have ever read and yet, despite the unhurried prose, it brims with suspense, so much so I was reluctant to put the book down and read it within a matter of days.

It's a rare, almost perfect novel that provides such an eloquent insight into the nature of human relationships that I don't honestly know how to condense the magic of this profoundly moving and deeply unsettling story into one short review that will do A Gesture Life any kind of justice.

In fact, I'd argue that the blurb on my Penguin edition, doesn't even come close to explaining what this story is about, and I suspect that most people would overlook the book entirely should they stumble upon it in a bookstore or library. Personally, I can't even remember why I bought it, other than the ringing one-word endorsements - "Stunning," New York Times Book Review; "Unforgettable," USA Today; "Mesmerising," San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - on the front cover must have spoken to me on some deeply unconscious level. Even so, this book lay unread in my bedside cabinet for nine months before I decided to pick it up.

And once I picked it up, I was taken on a sagacious journey that allowed me to walk in another man's shoes. The fact that that man was an elderly Japanese-American speaks volumes for Chang-rae Lee's abilities as a storyteller...

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I will be discussing this novel with my Literature classes next week. The feedback I've had so far is that it's an amazing novel and everyone is eager to get together and have a go.

A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee

This complex exquisitely written novel concerns both cultural/racial exile and universal experiences of emotional exile. It raises numerous human and moral issues: how the need for acceptance generates a pressure to conform that may ultimately be dehumanizing; how the brutality of war creates enormous moral dilemmas, where the horrors experienced and the decisions that are made may destroy the capacity to make emotional attachments; how parent-child relationships are inevitably affected by past trauma. The relationship of father and daughter is beautifully drawn and depicts powerfully how self-destructive and yet brave a troubled adolescent can be.

From its retrospective stance the novel can ask moral questions with the benefit of hindsight, yet it confronts us with the need to address those same questions in the here and now. Interestingly, the protagonist, Hata, is known locally as "Doc" and although he never tries to pass himself off as a physician, this pseudo-doctor designation is emblematic of the facade which is his life. It is metaphor also for the imperfect moral choices that Hata makes. In the end, Hata's willingness to let the past surface and disturb the present is what redeems him and allows him to re-establish emotional connection.

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I will be teaching this novel in the Fall of 2008.

theteach

Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee

From Publishers Weekly
Espionage acts as a metaphor for the uneasy relationship of Amerasians to American society in this eloquent, thought-provoking tale of a young Korean-American's struggle to conjoin the fragments of his personality in culturally diverse New York City. Raised in a family and culture valuing careful control of emotions and appearances, narrator Henry Park, son of a successful Korean-American grocer, works as an undercover operative for a vaguely sinister private intelligence agency. He and his "American wife," Lelia, are estranged, partly as a result of Henry's stoical way of coping with the recent death of their young son. Henry is also having trouble at work, becoming emotionally attached to the people he should be investigating. Ruminating on his upbringing, he traces the path that has led to his present sorrow; as he infiltrates the staff of a popular Korean-American city councilman, he discovers the broader, societal context of the issues he has been grappling with personally. Writing in a precise yet freewheeling prose that takes us deep into Henry's head, first-novelist Lee packs this story, whose intrigue is well measured and compelling, with insights into both current political events and timeless questions of love, culture, family bonds and identity.

theteach