Reviews

My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee

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wippetywu's review

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

stedjaa's review against another edition

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3.0

3/5

avidreadr's review against another edition

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5.0

Two years later and I still remember this book like it was yesterday. The weirdness of this one is NEXT LEVEL and some readers may not like that. But for me, it all really worked and came together in a fever dream of an ending. I loved the MC and felt his voice was super unique and his story sad/weird/bizarre.

candacesiegle_greedyreader's review against another edition

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5.0

In "My Year Abroad," Chang-Rae Lee shows he is a writer at the top of his game. This is a complicated novel, and all of it is immediate and true. it's also the best use of bookending I may ever have read. Isn't that device supposed to keep tension and build suspence about how point A got to point B? In "My Year," it will keep you guessing.

When we first meet Tiller, he's moving into a rented house in a hard-scrabble rust belt town with Val, a woman in her late 30s and her 8 year old son, whom he met in Hong Kong Airport. She is witness protection for turning her mobster husband in to the Feds, and now 21 year old Tiller has gone through Witsec with her and is joining her in exile.

Only a year before, Tiller was one of the less affluent of his affluent New Jersey suburb, which is why he was washing dishes and filling in as a caddy to help fund his junior year abroad. We never know what country he's going to, but it doesn't matter because he doesn't go there. He fills in caddying for a friend and meets an interesting group of wealthy investors, and one of them takes a shine to him. Pong Lu is a chemist but also owns businesses --mostly food related--all over the area. Pong has a quiet chrisma, a gentle, deliberate way of bringing special talents out in others. He invites Tiller to come with him on a week-long business trip to Asia. The trip is extended and strange things begin to happen. A lot of drugs and sex, strange smoothie conoctions, weird cultish behavior, but it is all okay and Tiller feels safe as long as Pong is there. And then, suddenly, Pong is not.

And there you have your bookends. Tiller's in the town they call Stagno with a strange woman and her "XL little boy." Why is he there? Why didn't he go home? Where's Pong?

This is a long book,, but I wished it were longer. The pages shoot by. The mysteries pile up. The sections of crazy rich partying in various parts of Asia went on too long, but were always reeled in by the presence of Pong and Tiller's unsuspected reactions. The part set in Drum's compound near Shenzen stretched patience, but never enough to put the book down. and say "I'm done."

"My Year Abroad" is a good novel for these times. Will we ever have answers? Does it matter?

Thanks to Riverhead books and Netgalley for the pleasure of reviewing this novel.

~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader

carriepnw's review

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn’t stand any of the characters. I should have put it down, but alas I did finish it… finally

Content Warnings

aberdeenwaters's review

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4.0

I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent on the world Lee created. Lyrical, funny, emotional, and interesting, I looked forward to it every time I picked it up. Frankly, there were a lot of really good lines and paragraphs. The main reason it’s not 5 stars is it felt a little ~too~ “ennui-ish,” if that makes sense. I thought the novel was gently moving towards something more profound than what I found at the end (or perhaps I should appreciate the smaller profundity I was dealt). The tiller character was a little too empty, but it’s his emptiness that allowed his journey to happen. So it’s mixed! Anyway, I really really liked it. I’ll read anything Lee writes.