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A review by markw
Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee
dark
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Took me a while to get in tune with one, perhaps because of the oblique nature of a lot of the writing and dialogue, but by the final third I was completely gripped.
Henry Park is a first-generation American Korean who works as a kind of undercover spy or detective, embedding himself in organisations and reporting back to his boss, the ruthless Dennis, for the benefit of the unknown (to Henry) client.
As the blub on my edition says, it's about "the immigrant experience, about love, loyalty and the languages that define us". It's also about racism, betrayal (loyalty's partner), and the American dream.
Henry speaks some Korean, learned in his childhood, but not confidently, and has the first-generation immigrant experience of being neither one thing nor the other. It's no accident that his wife, Lelia, is a childhood speech and language therapist.
Prior to the action of the novel, Henry has gone badly adrift in a placement: posing as a client/patient of a therapist in order to report on him, he is drawn to the man (a kind of "going native"?) and has to be extracted in professional disgrace by his handler Jack. About this time his wife Lelie has apparently lost faith in him and departed for the Greek islands. Henry is then placed with the team of John Kwang, a local politician, the first Korean Councilman in the borough. Henry is effective in his role as mole because he is able to get close to his targets, but this puts him the position of either betraying the target or betraying his boss by not doing so.
Henry Park is a first-generation American Korean who works as a kind of undercover spy or detective, embedding himself in organisations and reporting back to his boss, the ruthless Dennis, for the benefit of the unknown (to Henry) client.
As the blub on my edition says, it's about "the immigrant experience, about love, loyalty and the languages that define us". It's also about racism, betrayal (loyalty's partner), and the American dream.
Henry speaks some Korean, learned in his childhood, but not confidently, and has the first-generation immigrant experience of being neither one thing nor the other. It's no accident that his wife, Lelia, is a childhood speech and language therapist.
Prior to the action of the novel, Henry has gone badly adrift in a placement: posing as a client/patient of a therapist in order to report on him, he is drawn to the man (a kind of "going native"?) and has to be extracted in professional disgrace by his handler Jack. About this time his wife Lelie has apparently lost faith in him and departed for the Greek islands. Henry is then placed with the team of John Kwang, a local politician, the first Korean Councilman in the borough. Henry is effective in his role as mole because he is able to get close to his targets, but this puts him the position of either betraying the target or betraying his boss by not doing so.