Rating: 
Summary: A great read; don't miss it.
Review: Mr Lee has written a great literary novel,ranking with the best. His use of words, and subtlety with language makes this book a joy to read.
Rating:
Summary: brilliant follow-up to Native Speaker
Review: Painting a new setting for the common plight of an "outsider," Chang-Rae Lee poses more questions about a fiction that is many people's reality. Quality fiction at its best for a newcomer to the literary world voicing the needed words of the Asian-American.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought-provoking
Review: 'A Gesture Life' compares favorably with recent releases set in the WWII era. It is as fascinating as 'The Triumph and the Glory', every bit as insightful as 'The Emperor's General', yet written is a fresh style from a rare perspective. I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: A Gesture needs no words.
Review: The story in itself is already appropriately described by the editorial and spotlight reviews so this is simply adding my two cents.
As I read some of the reviews given, some said that it was either slow or a very violent read, or portrayed the asian stereotype of an asian man with no heart, and so on. I can only disagree.
To understand and feel for this book, you have to understand the context of which this book works on. It is unfortunate that most people, who live in countries not affected by the atrocities of Japan, do not know that the exploitation of the "comfort women" numbered to be around 100,000. It was an estimated ratio of 1 woman made "available" for 35 soldiers. 80% of them are believed to be Koreans, although others from Taiwan, China, Philippines, Malaysia, and so on were used. Now, add in the cultural mentality existing in those countries and how they would have reacted to such a thing. As a parallel, I highly doubt anyone would say a book under the backdrop of the Holocaust is too slow, too violent to stomach, or show that the protagonist has no heart or feeling.
However, that's all outside knowledge, not even needed to be lured into a beautiful web that Chang Rae Lee spins for us. In fact, the book purposely focuses on one man and lets the history be. It is almost as if saying, what's done is done and what is left is to move on.
The story of course is about Doc Hata, immeasurably weary and filled with his burden. All he can do is raise walls, in fact that is the only thing he can do. Finally, he leaves with a gesture. A mark that needs no explanation and especially no words.
The book is a beautiful and intricate piece that meshes the social and cultural conditions of the past, present, and future into one man. It is his struggle. I believe anyone can relate to that and it simply adds to prove that silent waters do run deep.
Rating: 
Summary: Nicely written, but a bit slow.
Review: This is a story of a Japanese/Korean immigrant (Doc Hata) who lives his life in fear. His fear does not come from a physical threat, but instead from his unwillingness to suffer any sort of shame or embarrassment. As a result, Hata builds a world of gestures, manners, and repetition, and avoids having to actually live. Unfortunately for those he comes across, this characteristic means that he is little able to lend the emotional support that each one of them requires. While the end of the story demonstrates a voyage of self-discovery, you can imagine that the stunted Doc Hata is not the most engaging character to follow around for a couple of hundred pages.
Rating:
Summary: A Gesture Life
Review: "A Gesture Life" is a novel that reads more like a memoir, a sad, melancholic first person narrative by the main characer (Dr. Hata). In a superb elegant style, beautifully written, constrained and at the same time powerfully moving, the author deals with the problem of being an outsider and of conformity in exchange for respectfulness. Dr. Hata is an uneasy psyche, a restrained individual who behind a façade of a well-established and respected person hides a complex and dramatic life struggle. Since his childhood he has felt as an outsider, first as a native Korean who is adopted by a Japanese couple, and then as an immigrant in the U.S.A. With psychological wounds he feels unable to express or integrate the emotion of love into his life, using the shield of politness, of integrity, living his life as a sequence of appropriate "gestures." By acting as such, he describes his life as "something exemplary to the sensation of near perfect lightness of being in a place and not being there... the trouble of finding a remedy but not quite a cure... such is the cast of my belonging, molding to whatever is at hand."
The novel has a double time frame setting, one based on past memories of Hata's experience as a paramedic in the Japanese army, and the second focused on the present. Hata's relationship with the opposite sex has failed (with the comfort women "K," with Mary Burns, and with his own daughter) and when he reviews the outcome he finds guilt and regret, whole-heartedly admitting "there are those who would gladly give up all they have gained in the world to have relented just once when it mattered."
How much can an individual sacrifice his own-self, how high a price must he pay in order to adapt to his surroundings and conform to what is expected from him? How much does evasion of reality affect a relationship? Because of Hata's attitude he has remained detached, never within the full embrace of life, and having to face painful consequences.
This novel is a wonderful psychological drama, artistically performed, poignant, shocking at times, but above all a moving tale of a human condition.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, melancholy, profound
Review: "A Gesture Life" reinforces my impression that Lee is one of the most gifted American writers of this generation. His skills as a wordsmith are awe inspiring, which he employs to offer profound insights on the mores and prejudices of society. This novel takes patience to get into. The hesitant and painfully careful and thorough manner in which he depicts the narrator's voice are of course part of his portrayal of a Japanese immigrant who, being raised in Japan of ethnic Korean extraction, has lead a life of striving to acclimate and maintain a favorable, and low profile. However, as the novel progresses the reader discovers that this unobtrusiveness is intentional as well as cultural and is concerted to atone for barbarism in which the protagonist was involved. The work is rife with foreshadowing, metaphors and irony. It focuses on a ugly, sordid aspect of the Japanese Imperial Army as a foil for societal hypocracy and resulting irony in suburban New York. Lee employs a Dickenseque technique in painting this fictional memoir that I found in a number ways reminiscent of "A Christmas Carol". This is a dark and often depressing work. It should be taken up with the thought of reading something profound, important, and masterfully written.
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