Rating: 
Summary: Fascintating
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book - as much for what it reveals of China as for the plot. The three people at the center of this novel --husband, wife and the 'girlfriend' (not mistress, that step is too dangerous for them to risk) who waits 18 years for him to get a divorce-- are in a state of limbo for much of their adult lives, constricted as they are by the laws of their society and by the limitations of their experience. This is a fast, easy book to read, but I don't mean this to sound negative, much is going on beneath the surface of an apparently straightforward story, and it left me contemplating how much we all take for granted about the laws of our society, how rarely we question the conventions we're brought up with. Well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: What is a real waiting
Review: What's the main point of this book? Not until the last few pages did I recognize it. In this book, Ha Jin told us what was the real waiting¡XNeither Kong Lin's nor Manna's, But Shuyu's. As a silent and humble character, Shuyu was ¡§naturally¡¨ forgotten by most readers. However, only patient readers could enjoy the ecstasy finding the surprising ending Ha Jin tried to tell us after the long read. At this point this book was very beautiful and successful ¡V and sometimes a bit metaphorical, even philosophical --- hitting its climax, simultaneouly testing the readers and awarding those faithful. By design, we readers SHOULD wait patiently, waited for the ending. Impatient readers would never find the beauty and the true meaning of this story. In fact, since the pace of this book was so slow, the stories and scenerios during those 18 waiting years were repeated and predictable, I almost gave it up in the middle. But after I finished it, I was deeply moved and burst into tears. The book totally deserved it's reputation.BTW, Why "18" years? Chinese, and only Chinese, knew that. It refered to an ancient folk tale of China. A woman (WANG BAU-CHUAN) waited for her husband (SHUE PING-KWEI), an officer, for "18" years in a shack, not knowing her husband had another lover in the army. This tale was so famous that almost every Chinese knew it. So we knew that Ha Jin tried to write a modern Wang-Shue tale. Each main character in the "Waiting" had its own corresponding character in the Wang-Shue story. The only flaw in this book, in my opinion, was the chapter about Manna was raped. It read so cheap.
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: Time passes us by
Review: This is one of my favorite books, one that I keep an extra copy of on the shelf just so I can lend it to people. The book is especially remarkable for the way it portrays the passage of time. The years go by lightly, passing the reader by the same way that they are passing the characters by. The characters wait for some event to resolve their uncertainty, the reader waits for a resolution as well, and before you know it -- while you wait -- the book has come to its bittersweet end, hence the title.
The quality of the writing is uniquely beautiful. English is a second language for the author and this is just perceptible in the writing, like an accent. It gives each sentence a special tone and makes you look at this book and others with new interest in the craft of writing.
Rating:
Summary: Mao Dun
Review: Ha Jin does a great job of showing the duality of human nature. The two characters are forever caught between two equally valid interpretations of reality.
Is Lin Kong's love for Manna true love, or simply a symptom of his own stunted emotional growth? Is Lin Kong truly a caring and sophisticated man, or is he just too timid to express his true passions?
Maoist China serves as the force which divides reality into these two spheres of interpretation. The traditional Chinese ideal is constantly being overturned by Mao's suppression of the old ways -- an embrace of the new which forces Lin Kong to sometimes despise the village life. Yet he can never completely suppress his love for the idyllic rural family life.
As the novel moves to the post-Mao Deng's "to get rich is glorious" era, the carpet is swept from under the characters' feets and they are forced to consider the possibility that they are pathetic victims who never actually made a real choice in their entire lives. Ha Jin portrays this internal conflict by having the characters actually holding conversations with voices inside their head.
If you can identify with these characters -- and I think anybody who has ever looked back on their lives with some hint of regret will be able to -- you will find that Ha Jin successfully tries to assuage those regrets by universalizing our suffering. There is a universal element to Ha Jin's prose because it speaks of emotions so literally. His use of analogies are used to explain specific emotional events, rather than to offer over-arching interpretations.
Unlike a plot-driven novel where the author intentionally deceives the reader (to the reader's great joy), Ha Jin leaves these characters completely exposed to us. And unlike characters in a plot-driven novel, Ha Jin's characters are without clear intentions, without unambiguous motivations, but constantly flooded by internal conflict.
What the Chinese call "mao dun."
Rating:
Summary: Poetically written
Review: This book held my attention and I looked forward to picking it up and reading every free moment I had. Look inside this book and read the excerpted first pages. The writing style continues the same throughout. The author is a master writer; he is almost a minimalist painter (with words) much like the Chinese landscape painters. I would say it gave a good picture of China during the time of the cultural revolution, which was the reason I decided I wanted to read this book. As for the storyline, it made me think about the question, "What is love?" Naturally, the book did not really answer the question and the reader has to decide for him/herself. I came away from this book being glad for the time I spent reading it. I would recommend this book to anyone, provided they aren't looking for an action packed thriller about cops and robbers or a passion packed sex-filled romance novel. To me it is a piece of poetry.
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Summary: Vanity of Desires
Review: A man manages to get what he wanted, struggling through the inflexible Chinese social system disallowing freedom. The essence of this story, however, resides in man's nature of which the desire is endlessly unfulfilled regardless of his struggles. I interpreted this story to warn against chasing something for many years, which we may find we don't want in the end. We are all apt to fall into this type of situation more or less, for countless and endless desires human nature. Also, the writer illustraes an interesting way the man's tendency to follow a more presentable woman to find in the end that shw was not what he wanted.
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Summary: Waiting for the sake of waiting
Review: It is rare that the essence of a book is so completely captured in its title. The title of this particular book, "Waiting," is apt in many ways. First of all, the protagonist, Lin Kong, spends 18 years waiting to divorce his wife. While he is waiting, as is his intended bride-to-be, the reader also waits in the daily grind of his job, duties, and other human interactions, for the day Lin Kong is finally able to divorce his country-bumpkin wife and marry the woman of his dreams. So both the protagonist and the reader wait, page after page, event after event, yearning for that end to his unhappiness.
If, however, the "waiting" was meant only for this long-awaited divorce, the reader finds out that the book goes on to narrate the married life of Lin Kong and his new bride, Manna Wu, after the supposed end to his waiting. Is the book all of a sudden not about waiting anymore? It turns out that this "waiting" is not just for the one event in life, rather it turns out to be the very condition of continuing human existence. As the protagonist realizes that he was waiting "for the sake of waiting," it is the very thing that kept him alive and living.
Thus, when his waiting for the divorce is over and he starts a family with his new bride, he starts to have regrets. When his bride turns out to have a heart condition which would eventually kill her, he yearns to wait again. This time, the reader is left with the impression that he will have to wait for Manna to die, in order to be reunited with Shuyu, his first wife, whom he now regrets divorcing. The very last image with which the novel ends is telling: as Lin comes to the realization that he will have to wait for her to die, Manna looks out the window, radiantly and so alive, greeting those outside it. There is no mistake here that the reader is being led to believe that the waiting this time will again take a long time. Just as the divorce was certain but slow to come, the reader is left to believe that Manna's death, which will set Lin free again, will be certain, but again slow. So the waiting game begins again.
Ha Jin's prose is impeccable. It is flawless. He writes better than most native English speakers. It reminds me of Franz Kafka's prose, written in impeccable, but book-learned German. Undoubtedly the fact that both Ha Jin and Franz Kafka are writing in a language that is not native to them sets them apart from those to whom language comes easily. At the same time, both Ha Jin and Franz Kafka, because they are conversant in a non-native language, are able to see common human condition before they see particularities in disparate cultures. Therefore, both Jin and Kafka end up writing in a universal language that is easily understood by everyone. It speaks to everyone and is felt by everyone. At the same time, as writers of "minor literature," as inside outsiders, they are able to jar consciousness and make the reader see things differently.
In a short story by Kafka called, "The Judgment," the protagonist, Georg Bendemann, jumps off of a bridge because he has seen the true nature of human condition. Not being able to deal with it, he opts to die while the endless traffic crosses under the bridge. This image of Georg in his final moment and Manna Wu's radiant face at the end of "Waiting" seemed to me two sides of the same face, one who is denied the kind of "waiting" that sustains humanity and the other who enables it.
Rating:
Summary: Is patience a virtue?
Review: What makes this 20th century Chinese fable so memorable is its subtle portrayal of time. The portrayal of time's passage in a life we see as "not fully-lived" and marked by restraint, is told so elegantly and richly that moments lost to the characters are transformed into those which are the best lived, and truest (certainly the most innocent) of their lives.
It may strike readers as a fairy tale or fable for the ending, when the illusions that were bound up in the doctor's years of waiting for his sweetheart are unleashed. Then the reader must question the years he waited, following the law. What were they for? Was his commitment to a woman in the world or to waiting itself? The allure of the unattainable is perhaps a universal human weakness, but you cannot ask for a more beautiful portrayal of it than in this fine book. His epiphany on love at the end of the novel still does not ultimately change his character, one in which the act of waiting for something is almost his very own reflection.
Historically, this is an excellent portrayal of both interior life as it existed under Chinese communism, and the interference of public onto private life found in any society.
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Summary: An Chinese immigrant man who knows how to write stories in E
Review: The author writes a good story building on a innate trait that the Chinese people seem to have, patience. He does well to set the story with this foreboding, eventually to the breaking point in the last fifth of the book. This author uses the patience ideal, building up scenerio after scenerio. As the reader you know that the protagonists are being frustrated by the waiting but don't show it. You know something is going to happen, you just don't know what. It is the last dozen pages that give away life's issues.
Don't read unless you have patience. The author emigrated from his native China to study at Brandeis U, teaches English at Emory U. One of the few Chinese American men who write good fiction based on life in the new China.
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