Scan barcode
cameronbradley's review
3.0
Native Speaker is a lot of things: a spy thriller, a portrayal of the immigrant experience, a marriage drama, and a personal tragedy tale. If you're wondering whether all those elements merge and crackle into a fusion bomb of excitement and awe...they, disappointingly, do not.
Not that this is a bad book per se. In fact, it's an extroardinarly ambitious first novel by Chang-rae Lee, which was published when he was only 29. The prose is mostly excellent, and I devoured the first fifty or so pages in a single sitting.
In a nutshell, Henry Park, the novel's first-generation Korean-American protagonist, is left with nothing but a note after his wife leaves him. In meandering patches, we catch glimpses of his rough upbringing in a traditional household, his ingratiation into the political campaign of an upstart Korean politician named John Kwang, his foray into the world of industrial spywork, the tragic fate of his child, his....yeah...there's a lot going on; and the lens through which the reader watches the story unfold is shaky and unfocused.
The plot suffers as a result, and although my copy of the book is only roughly 350 pages, it took me nearly three months to get around to finishing it. (To put that in perspective, I typically read about fifty books a year [a book a week]).
Yet as I finished the last page, I got chills thinking about how powerful this book could've been: Henry Park, torn between two worlds, forever feeling himself to be an outcast, is pressured to betray a rising politician who stands for everything he should be aligned with, yet his numbness to his Korean heritage and his somnabulant devotion to a country that seems to view him as an outcast bends him into a shape unrecognizable to everyone, including—it seems—himself.
If only the journey was as satisfying as the destination.
------------------------------------------------
[Subscribe to my free newsletter Lit Smithery and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks directly into your inbox.]
Not that this is a bad book per se. In fact, it's an extroardinarly ambitious first novel by Chang-rae Lee, which was published when he was only 29. The prose is mostly excellent, and I devoured the first fifty or so pages in a single sitting.
In a nutshell, Henry Park, the novel's first-generation Korean-American protagonist, is left with nothing but a note after his wife leaves him. In meandering patches, we catch glimpses of his rough upbringing in a traditional household, his ingratiation into the political campaign of an upstart Korean politician named John Kwang, his foray into the world of industrial spywork, the tragic fate of his child, his....yeah...there's a lot going on; and the lens through which the reader watches the story unfold is shaky and unfocused.
The plot suffers as a result, and although my copy of the book is only roughly 350 pages, it took me nearly three months to get around to finishing it. (To put that in perspective, I typically read about fifty books a year [a book a week]).
Yet as I finished the last page, I got chills thinking about how powerful this book could've been: Henry Park, torn between two worlds, forever feeling himself to be an outcast, is pressured to betray a rising politician who stands for everything he should be aligned with, yet his numbness to his Korean heritage and his somnabulant devotion to a country that seems to view him as an outcast bends him into a shape unrecognizable to everyone, including—it seems—himself.
If only the journey was as satisfying as the destination.
------------------------------------------------
[Subscribe to my free newsletter Lit Smithery and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks directly into your inbox.]
serenova's review
1.0
I didn't particularly like this novel.
I was required to read it for my Asian American Literature class. We had some every interesting class discussions, talking about the use of language and the fact that Hnery uses language almost as a barrier.
If you are interested in a (fake) autobiographical novel about a civilian spy, then you might like it. But it's not my kind of book.
I was required to read it for my Asian American Literature class. We had some every interesting class discussions, talking about the use of language and the fact that Hnery uses language almost as a barrier.
If you are interested in a (fake) autobiographical novel about a civilian spy, then you might like it. But it's not my kind of book.
sfujii's review
3.0
Meh - got to the end and was like, what was the point of that? I think I have Lee overload - his books all explore the same theme of Korean-American identity crisis...
sunui's review
4.0
this seems to inhabit a type of Asian American anxiety that is partially familiar to me, but in the same way that history textbooks are familiar. it's all Asian men who marry white women, minorities clashing up against one another, Korean Americans who lose their native tongue and struggle to see themselves in Koreans. Sometimes that all combines to feel a bit artificial but I guess that's the form that anxiety at that time must have demanded, real intricacy in both its formation and its rebuttal. I also can’t help but feel that whatever makes this book feel foreign to me is also what makes it so important. this was a huge trap book but still a banger
catherine_louise's review
3.0
i think this book needed more time from me than i had to give it - it needs a careful reader to be fully appreciated & understood
transcendantalism's review
3.0
I personally did not fall in love with this book. But it is interesting that Asian-Americans are being introduced into the 2019 presidential race and I found links from this book to current times.
nuhafariha's review
3.0
I loved Chang-Rae Lee's prosaic writing style with its dense contemplations on what it means to be an immigrant in America, what it means to truly try to assimilate into a hostile culture and what the process ends up costing the immigrant. It reminded me a lot of Lahiri's The Namesake plus a little bit of political conspiracy and spy action. However, the ending was abrupt and disarming, a little too convenient.
synoptic_view's review
This novel covers an extraordinary amount of ground. It is a political thriller, a domestic drama, a multigenerational immigration story, a spy novel, a portrait of New York City, and more. So many different pieces get packed in, and they work surprisingly well together.
At its core, the novel deals with the complex thoughts about identity of a second-generation (Census definition) Korean-American named Henry Park. Henry's immigrant father owned grocery stores in New York, and their relationship provides the basis for many of Henry's thoughts about what it means to be of one culture or another. As a young adult, Henry works for a roughly sketched political/economic espionage firm that specializes in gaining the confidence of other recent American immigrants, providing further opportunity to discuss the immigrant experience. NYC plays an important role throughout--bringing different immigrant groups into contact and conflict and setting the stage for the political race that much of the plot deals with.
Finally, as the title suggests, the book also focuses on language--particularly the way that many immigrants in the story carefully polish their English to hide traces of the native language while occasionally slipping and letting accents emerge. This is reflected in the writing of the book itself. It veers from poetic lyricism to totally standard "airport fiction" to dialogue written in dialect. Like much else in the story, I wanted this choice to be elaborated on even more.
At its core, the novel deals with the complex thoughts about identity of a second-generation (Census definition) Korean-American named Henry Park. Henry's immigrant father owned grocery stores in New York, and their relationship provides the basis for many of Henry's thoughts about what it means to be of one culture or another. As a young adult, Henry works for a roughly sketched political/economic espionage firm that specializes in gaining the confidence of other recent American immigrants, providing further opportunity to discuss the immigrant experience. NYC plays an important role throughout--bringing different immigrant groups into contact and conflict and setting the stage for the political race that much of the plot deals with.
Finally, as the title suggests, the book also focuses on language--particularly the way that many immigrants in the story carefully polish their English to hide traces of the native language while occasionally slipping and letting accents emerge. This is reflected in the writing of the book itself. It veers from poetic lyricism to totally standard "airport fiction" to dialogue written in dialect. Like much else in the story, I wanted this choice to be elaborated on even more.
vemilla's review
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0