Rating: 
Summary: Finely written, Real art
Review: Chang-Rae Lee has a writing style that makes prose seem like poetry. Although the story is real and wonderful, his flow of words is like water pouring from a glass pitcher. Smooth...The story is about Dr. Hata, a Japanese man who came to America after the war. He adopts a young Japanese girl and tries his best to bring her up as a single father. His experience is influenced by his war assignments and his contacts with a woman near the front. Lee moves back and forth between the two showing how much his past affects his future. The descriptions in this book are detailed and sometimes gruesome. But they are never obscene. All further the plot and show the harsh realities of war and life. So deserving of the Asian American Literary /Award this book will be the talk of the land very soon. Dr. Hata, daughter Sunny, and real estate agen Liv are characters that I will remember for months to come. Very real. Oprah will be calling Mr. Lee soon. Watch, he'll be on her list before you know it.
Rating: 
Summary: I resent being called an "Asian-American"
Review: It's just like being called a 'minority'. These phrases are used to further balkanize human beings into little tribes. I may have Asian descendants, but who cares? Mr. Lee does not speak on behalf of me nor do other self-appointed Asian-Americans. I'm a Human Being, first. An American, second. And probably a Basketball Player, third. (I'm 6'3, which is too tall for some tribes) If you are going to label me, label me this: TALL-GOOD-LOOKING AMERICAN OF ASIAN ANCESTRY WHO HATES BEING CALLED ASIAN.
Rating: 
Summary: Double Identity
Review: At first "A Gesture Life" seems to be yet another novel of middle-cass discontent in the suburbs of New York, albeit with an Asian-American protagonist. There's even an early reference to John Cheever's "The Swimmer." But this novel turns out to be more ambitious, more surprising, and perhaps deeper than the standard bedroom-community ennui. The protagonist, "Doc" Hata, has a more complicated life than he wishes to acknowledge, including some episodes from his experience in the Japanese army that he would rather forget. Hata is the narrator, and while Lee can be a graceful writer, the extreme control that defines Hata's voice gets a little claustrophobic by the end. And although Hata is well-drawn and complex, much of the supporting cast isn't. Others here have mentioned "Remains of the Day"; in some ways I'm reminded of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," by Haruki Murakami, which also cuts back and forth between WWII atrocity and contemporary malaise (in Tokyo), but which strikes me as more of a virtuoso performance than "A Gesture Life." The unlikely pileup of action in the last 50 or so pages sort of undercuts the care Lee had exercised in his plotting up to that point. Still, this is an engaging read, and it seems pretty clear that Lee has some worthwhile things to say -- certainly the book can make you reconsider how well you "know" the various shopkeepers and other familiar faces that you might come into casual, public contact with.
Rating:
Summary: A JOURNEY WORTH TAKING...
Review: I read this book, simply because the editorial reviews made it so compelling. The writing in this book is truely breaktaking as you are taken on a journey of Doc Hata, who especially in today's highly multi-cultural society, could be anyone. As you get past the first chapter you don't quite believe the sureness of Doc Hata's seemingly perfect and planned existence. Mr. Lee does a wonderful job of telling the story through Doc Hata, carefully weaving the distant and not so distant past into the present. This book will touch you tenderly and deeply.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as his first
Review: A Japanese/Korean war veteran haunted by memories of Korean comfort women; an immigrant trying to be a model minority; an affair with a white woman; an adopted Korean daughter. Hmmm. A bit too much to handle in one book. Lee was stronger when he stuck to the Asian American immigrant experience with the motif of spy in his first novel. He does a good job of writing about the excessive concern over formality, propriety and behavior (similar to Kazuo Ishiguro's _Remains of the Day_) in the protagonist's attempts to be a model citizen, but the other elements involving flashbacks of the war and the troubled adopted daughter seem extraneous to the plot. Overall, Lee writes as an American impersonating an Asian impersonating an American, but doesn't quite pull off a convincing portrait. I could see what he was getting at but the results are more miss than hit. Oh well...I can see why some are impressed with his "quiet" writing style, and there is much to commend about that alone. Still, not as compelling as I hoped it would be.
Rating:
Summary: explosion of trauma
Review: Lee's book is so quiet--there's a quiet store, a quiet house, a quiet neighborhood, and it seems even quiet inside the mind. The quiet is described and depicted with grace, so it is a very complex and interesting zone. I wondered how such peace was maintained--what was the price of this tension. One reason I found the book so powerful is connected to how the tension is exploded and what the tension ends up being. As a person interested in trauma and war, I found Lee's development of those themes among the best I have read. It has a completely different feel from D.M. Thomas's White Hotel, but something of its shock.
Rating:
Summary: poetic language
Review: The other reviews describe the basics of this engaging story. This is a classic "onion skin" novel: layers are expertly exposed revealing complex characters and secrets of the past. However, one of the major attractions of this book is the beauty of the prose. Each word is chosen with care and assembled into a poetic masterpiece. This was a wonderful reading experience- highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking
Review: This book is hard to describe in words, being that I am new to reviewing any book! However, I felt that this book deserved recognition and well deserved outstanding review. Not only is the book beautifully and artfully written, the story itself is a breath of fresh air. How many American authored books can you name a Korean-Japanese American as the main character, who was born in Japan, served in the World War II as a Japanese medic, who encounters a beautiful, young, Korean Comfort Woman and madly falls in love with her? And this is only a small part of this wonderfullly written book of self discovery and pain Doc Hata has hidden below the surface. The true meaning of "A Gesture Life" is slowly revealed to Doc Hata as he reluctantly but unwaveringly comes to terms with his past and his present. If the story doesn't grab you then read it for Mr. Lee's exceptional talents as a writer.
Rating:
Summary: A Novel Which Provides Welcome Cultural Insights
Review: Lee has managed to produce a skillfully written novel which contains riveting flashbacks to the major character's moral conflicts as a Japanese officer in Asia during the second World War but which, for the most part,focuses on his subsequent triumphs, after relocating in the Ubnited States in a suburban town as a small business man.However his business successes are tainted with personal disappoinments and agonies as a father of an adopted multiraciasl daughter. What emerges is a life with various successes and defeats of a highly principled but fundamentally lonlely man and his triumphant final gesture in a country which offered him refuge from the personal pains he would have endured in Japan as a native born man of Korean ancestry.
Rating: 
Summary: weak narrative energy
Review: i liked this book, though not as much as "native speaker" "gesture life" reminded me of kazuo ishiguro's "remains of the day." lee's prose is graceful and polished, but the novel as a whole is emotionally scattered and narratively flabby. entire sections could have been cut from the book without hurting the main story.
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