Rating: 
Summary: A deceptively simple tale
Review: After reading Ha Jin's collection of short stories ("Bridegroom"), I eagerly anticipated visiting a full novel, more to see if this writer of succinct, crystalline prose could maintain interest over the course of a complete tale. "Waiting" succeeds on every level. Not only does his clarity of vision and description of the most minute bits of beauty in his created world remain intact, he caresses his reader with simple people, simple situations, simple outcomes that make the overall effect of his novels simply heroic. The story of the ideals and frustrations of waiting for the right way only to find at the end of the day that the waiting dislodged the pleasure of what was already in place - this simple lesson is universal, tender, heartrending, and wholly understandable. Ha Jin distills life into a prism of words that reflect and refract life. What a rewarding and refreshing writer he is. The National Book Award was justly deserved!
Rating:
Summary: A Fable of Love
Review: Waiting explores the world of the Chinese cultural revolution from the perspective of two ordinary citizens, or comrades as they are called. The book explores two evolutions- that of the Chinese society, and that of Lin Kong, the central character.Lin Kong is a Chinese doctor during the period of the Cultural Revolution. He feels duty-bound to accept Shuyu as his wife after she is chosen by his parents, but falls in love with a woman, Manna, at his work in the city. Each year, he returns to Goose Village to attempt to divorce his wife, but each year returns to the hospital without the divorce and resulting permission to change his life. Thus, Lin spends 18 years of his life waiting to marry Manna. When they are finally able to consummate their relationship, Lin discovers what the waiting has done to both of them. For the first time, he realizes the futility of what he has done, and wants back that which he can no longer wait for. Ha Jin writes this book with sparse language, yet it is incredibly moving and evocative. Any reader interested in probing the intricacies of the heart is sure to find it fascinating.
Rating: 
Summary: Arranged
Review: Ha Jin's novel is a perfect allegory for the living conditions in communist China. Like arranged marriages, arranged lives kept people waiting for something to happen. The carrot was career promotion, if you marched along the party lines. The stick was discredit and displacement.
Of course, those rules applied only to the common of mortals. The bunch of mostly corrupt party bosses could live a more exciting life and profit fully from their uncontrolled power. This sometimes poignant, sometimes boring novel has not the same high standard as 'The Crazed', which was far more appealingly constructed, although it dealt with the same themes.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the wait
Review: To understand the characters of this novel, you have to be able to wait along with them throughout their ordeal. When introduced to Lin Kong, he is at court, trying to divorce his simple but loving wife, for yet another unsuccessful time. The reader wonders what could justify his patient yet undeniably cruel wish to divorce her year after year. Then we're taken back almost twenty years, when Lin meets Manna Wu, another notoriously patient character, who has been jilted by her lover. Eventually these two fall in love, yet are not able to consummate the relationship due to the social politics of 1970s China. This setting was perfect and wonderfully detailed as to why Lin and Manna suffer along in their comfortable misery, in development reminiscent of Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." In the end, neither is satisfied with the wait, but the reader comes to understand how Lin, Manna, and even Shuyu's minds are warped by their heart's sense of impending justice. Jin, as always, writes quite simply but effectively. I highly recommend this work, and any of his.
Rating: 
Summary: a perfect title for this book...
Review: because that's what you do, as you're reading... wait... for something to happen. And it's all about people on the cusp... the problem is they never take the plunge, really. I found this book to be well-written, thoughtful, but ultimately meandering, at best.
Rating:
Summary: A great book!
Review: well...i'm from mexico and i read this book and i just wanna tell you "it's great", it kept me readin' and readin' is a great and different history and a love novel where they have to fight against many things the protaginists are facing to be together, althought, at the end this history gave me a surprise... read it and you'll know what i'm talkin' 'bout
Rating:
Summary: Waiting
Review: Like Miso soup, subtle but fulfilling. Ha Jin keeps you waiting, playing on your patience for what you hope will be a closure at the end of the novel. Of course that never comes. It such a poignant story, where hope and happiness lie always at the outskirts and the complexities of patience and longing lay at its heart. His deceptively simple narrative style carried me along like a leaf in a slow and gentle stream, but before I knew it I was caught up in the tublent waters of the final chapters.
Rating:
Summary: Torn
Review: Story of a man torn between his arranged marriage wife who has been devoted to him and his lover who he is in love with. The book is pretty good and really puts you in the footsteps of this man torn and indecisive. I felt the environment of the story set in China added to the story greatly - making the situation more believeable than other settings.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't bother waiting
Review: Its one of those books that I wasn't going to finish, it was so boring. If the character had been a little more interesting, the story might have been more endearing, but how tedious it was.
Rating:
Summary: I'm still waitng for something to happen
Review: This is 300 pages of nothing going on. Waiting is a great title. You wait and wait for anything of interest and then you run out of pages.
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