A review by dee9401
In the Pond by Ha Jin

5.0

I finished reading In the Pond, by Ha Jin, on Wednesday night. This was my introduction to his writing, although I’ve bought several of his books for Diane, including Waiting. She really loved that book. I fell in love with the simple prose and fantastic story of In the Pond. It’s part Sisyphus and part car crash. You watch the main character struggle against the system, manifested at increasingly higher hierarchical levels in himself, his family, his work unit, his factory, his town, his province, and his country, China. You see the external battle he’s fighting, but you also see how he sometimes is his own worst enemy. But, he’s struggling to be a true and full person, and the foibles he lands in may be, in part, self-generated, but they’re also realistic situations that we often find ourselves in on a daily basis. Definitely read this book!