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shannon97's review
5.0
I loved this book more and more the further I got into it. The main character fascinated me. He is an older man from Japan - ethnically Korean - living in a small Midwestern town. He is careful to always do the right thing. Present the right appearance. He describes himself as well respected - someone that others come to for help and advice. Only around the edges of his description of his life do you see the moments of casual racism that he pretends not to notice, and the fact that he has no real relationships with the people around him. He swims in emotionally shallow waters - as if he is an observer of his own life, watching from the outside.
As the book unfolds, this begins to make sense and his internal life slowly becomes more clear. Throughout the book, you have to listen just as hard to what Mr. Hata does NOT say as to what he does say. And look closely at the way people in his life respond to him. It is when he starts remembering his experiences in WWII and the Korean "comfort women" that came to his camp that his character becomes less of an enigma. We see him as a young man, trying to normalize the horrors he is witnessing. As ever, wanting to present the correct front. Even when he tries to take a stand, he is incapable of admitting the full truth of the situation he is confronted with.
Toward the end of the book, cracks start to appear in his detachment and he is able to acknowledge the depths of his feelings and the way he has failed the people in his life. It is remarkable how clearly and how deeply Chang-rae Lee is able to develop a character that is so shut down. By the end of the book, I had tremendous compassion for him despite some terrible things he did. He is one of those characters that stay with you well after you finish the book.
As the book unfolds, this begins to make sense and his internal life slowly becomes more clear. Throughout the book, you have to listen just as hard to what Mr. Hata does NOT say as to what he does say. And look closely at the way people in his life respond to him. It is when he starts remembering his experiences in WWII and the Korean "comfort women" that came to his camp that his character becomes less of an enigma. We see him as a young man, trying to normalize the horrors he is witnessing. As ever, wanting to present the correct front. Even when he tries to take a stand, he is incapable of admitting the full truth of the situation he is confronted with.
Toward the end of the book, cracks start to appear in his detachment and he is able to acknowledge the depths of his feelings and the way he has failed the people in his life. It is remarkable how clearly and how deeply Chang-rae Lee is able to develop a character that is so shut down. By the end of the book, I had tremendous compassion for him despite some terrible things he did. He is one of those characters that stay with you well after you finish the book.
nuhafariha's review
3.0
I had very mixed feelings. On the one hand, the character is nuanced and deals with uneasy emotions and human relations. On the other hand, it feels performative. To what extent is Chang Rae Lee performing to the Asian American model minority stereotype, the quiet anguish, the gesture of domesticity? Who is the performance for?
solaana's review against another edition
3.0
A story having to do with Korean comfort women? Gonna be a downer.
smalefowles's review
4.0
Chang-rae Lee is a tremendous writer, and his style carefully outlines this book's narrator and his slowly revealed past. This was done artfully and well.
I wasn't precisely prepared for the horrors of history embedded in the text, and the portrayal did skirt close to the sensationalist, but you can't deny that war engenders horror. The ethical ambiguities made me very uncomfortable as a reader, but I think that worked well for the book. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be triggering or even offensive to some readers, though.
I'm not sure I would recommend it, but I'm glad I read it.
I wasn't precisely prepared for the horrors of history embedded in the text, and the portrayal did skirt close to the sensationalist, but you can't deny that war engenders horror. The ethical ambiguities made me very uncomfortable as a reader, but I think that worked well for the book. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be triggering or even offensive to some readers, though.
I'm not sure I would recommend it, but I'm glad I read it.
attoliaa's review
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Car accident, Abortion, Blood, Cancer, Racism, Rape, and War
kristinana's review
4.0
This was a beautifully-written book, and Lee does a wonderful job depicting memory and trauma, and the way we manage our pasts, try to spin our stories to make ourselves seem like better people. Hata seems disconnected from his feelings and unable to see the connections between his past and how he currently acts, and at least some of this seems to come both from Hata's inability to talk about the war in his current life and his inability to reveal himself to be Korean. He has embraced both a kind of polite reserve in his life and also an upward mobility that comes with claiming Japanese identity and a successful business. He is excessively concerned with appearance, for sure, but he is also motivated by a sense of knowing he doesn't really belong anywhere. In order to achieve an appearance of success, he must hide himself, and in order to uphold a sense of propriety, he must sacrifice feeling.
The scenes during WWII are extremely compelling and disturbing, and Lee has a brilliant way of introducing Hata's past bit by bit -- the striking way, for instance, that when he is in the hospital visiting a boy who needs a heart transplant, he remembers seeing his supervising doctor kill a man and then re-start his heart by massaging it by hand. Hata also seems to lie to himself so completely that it comes out in small ways as well, even down to whether or not he drinks or plays piano -- he baldly denies what other people have seen him do, in order to keep up an image of himself. Hata starts to talk of himself as a bad luck charm, and even this is a way of organizing the world and making himself look good. He tries to make it seem like this is a bad thing about him, but it takes any blame or agency away from himself and his actions, and (even as he recognizes this) it places him at the center of the universe, like a child.
Ultimately what I found most striking about the book is that it is about how men attempt to control women's bodies and sexuality. Hata considers himself a good person, someone who tries to protect women. He is disturbed by the fact of the "comfort women" and by men's violent control of women. But it's obvious that this impulse to protect is something Lee is also critiquing, as it leads Hata to attempt to control these women "for their own good." He doesn't view women as fully human, despite his protestations that he cares more for them than other men do. With K, he indulges in a fantasy of escape in which he rescues her. He rapes K and imagines she has "given herself to him" because she loves him, and only him. He judges his daughter's sexuality and then uses extreme measures to remove the evidence of it. He is attracted to Mary but seems turned off by the fact that she is in touch with her own desires. He is in love with the idea of rescuing women -- from violence, from poverty, from loneliness -- and yet this is more about his desire than the women's. He clearly wants women to fit into a model of feminine innocence and purity, and I believe Lee does a wonderful job of depicting these women as full of their own motivations and desires, even as those confound Hata. I think this is also about how Hata considers his Koreanness to be shameful, a secret, and so when he connects with K and his daughter (and even the earlier comfort woman he encounters), it is through a sense of shame and secrecy that he wishes to distance himself from. But ultimately it's about a kind of male "good guy" ness that attempts to control women and see them as not-fully-human by placing them in an undesirable and impossible role of purity.
There were times when I really loved this book, though I did feel a bit disappointed by the ending; it seemed like it was about to end multiple times, and Hata's obsession with some of the people in the town just got tiresome toward the end, plus there were a million accidents (some deadly, most not) that it started to feel like the kind of suburban melodrama I really dislike. Which is odd, when the rest of the book was so carefully paced. In any case, I really liked how the book made the reader work; I felt challenged in a good way by it, and I hope to read more by Chang-rae Lee.
The scenes during WWII are extremely compelling and disturbing, and Lee has a brilliant way of introducing Hata's past bit by bit -- the striking way, for instance, that when he is in the hospital visiting a boy who needs a heart transplant, he remembers seeing his supervising doctor kill a man and then re-start his heart by massaging it by hand. Hata also seems to lie to himself so completely that it comes out in small ways as well, even down to whether or not he drinks or plays piano -- he baldly denies what other people have seen him do, in order to keep up an image of himself. Hata starts to talk of himself as a bad luck charm, and even this is a way of organizing the world and making himself look good. He tries to make it seem like this is a bad thing about him, but it takes any blame or agency away from himself and his actions, and (even as he recognizes this) it places him at the center of the universe, like a child.
Ultimately what I found most striking about the book is that it is about how men attempt to control women's bodies and sexuality. Hata considers himself a good person, someone who tries to protect women. He is disturbed by the fact of the "comfort women" and by men's violent control of women. But it's obvious that this impulse to protect is something Lee is also critiquing, as it leads Hata to attempt to control these women "for their own good." He doesn't view women as fully human, despite his protestations that he cares more for them than other men do. With K, he indulges in a fantasy of escape in which he rescues her. He rapes K and imagines she has "given herself to him" because she loves him, and only him. He judges his daughter's sexuality and then uses extreme measures to remove the evidence of it. He is attracted to Mary but seems turned off by the fact that she is in touch with her own desires. He is in love with the idea of rescuing women -- from violence, from poverty, from loneliness -- and yet this is more about his desire than the women's. He clearly wants women to fit into a model of feminine innocence and purity, and I believe Lee does a wonderful job of depicting these women as full of their own motivations and desires, even as those confound Hata. I think this is also about how Hata considers his Koreanness to be shameful, a secret, and so when he connects with K and his daughter (and even the earlier comfort woman he encounters), it is through a sense of shame and secrecy that he wishes to distance himself from. But ultimately it's about a kind of male "good guy" ness that attempts to control women and see them as not-fully-human by placing them in an undesirable and impossible role of purity.
There were times when I really loved this book, though I did feel a bit disappointed by the ending; it seemed like it was about to end multiple times, and Hata's obsession with some of the people in the town just got tiresome toward the end, plus there were a million accidents (some deadly, most not) that it started to feel like the kind of suburban melodrama I really dislike. Which is odd, when the rest of the book was so carefully paced. In any case, I really liked how the book made the reader work; I felt challenged in a good way by it, and I hope to read more by Chang-rae Lee.
karentuerk's review
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.0
Never connected with the main character. Reminded me of the boomer generation- thinking that one is a good person even if they do terrible things just because they aren’t/weren’t as terrible as others
marissahd's review
Didn't want to read something this dark right now, though the language is gorgeous.
blearywitch's review
4.0
An old respectable Japanese man in a nice little American town, unmarried, with a young adopted daughter. I was so sure it was going to be a Lolita kind of story but I couldn't have been more wrong. Dr. Hata's reflections about his ambition, life, and relationships with a widow in town and his adopted daughter are interestingly unfulfilled, sad, and confusing as life sometimes is. It's sometimes harder when one's actions are embodied by one's culture and misinterpretations happen. His reflections of his past as a medical officer in the Japanese military camp in Rangoon were my favourite. The commander, captain, the tragic and brutal situations surrounding the unsuspecting female volunteers, and the brutality with which the Japanese soldiers dealt with each other were gripping. The criticism that I felt struck close to home was delivered by Captain Ono to Kurohata about sticking to resolves and not being hampered down by distracting feelings.
The decisions we make thoughout our life stays with us in so many different ways. The story, propelled by the melancholic writing brings out the morbid thoughts in one's mind. It was a good read albeit dark.
The decisions we make thoughout our life stays with us in so many different ways. The story, propelled by the melancholic writing brings out the morbid thoughts in one's mind. It was a good read albeit dark.