A review by baklavopita
A Free Life by Ha Jin

4.0

I tend to love novels that span a life or generations, so the environment was ripe for me to love this book. I did love this book. It's the story of a Chinese couple's life in America. The husband's character was too whiney. But the marriage was so real. I appreciated that while it wasn't a marriage made in heaven, it wasn't a stereotypical portrayal of a bad marriage. The marriage, their son, the characters seem very real, and I was captured by the story. It was a little puzzling to me that it was so difficult for the husband to figure out that love at 18 is not the same as love at 45. My biggest complaint was how the book ended. The story ends, and then there are all these poems that the husband wrote. The poems are an important part of the story and tell some of the story on their own. But it interrupted the ending and didn't wrap things up as thoroughly as I wanted.