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Summary: Hata's Journey
Review: Shall we call him Doc Hata or Franklin? Maybe Lieutanent Kurohata or some Korean name that he was born with? The characters in the story called him whatever they knew him as and readers will call him whatever they are comfortable with. I will call him Hata.Hata crafted his life in a subarban USA. Crafted around the existing social fabric and completely transparent. Much like a politician running for an office. Respectable business, right neighborhood, dignified house, Mercedes, white girlfriend... But when it came to his daughter, he was hopelessly lost. He named his daughter Sunny after his respectable store. But Sunny was anything but respectable in his view. She was a Korean like himself. She suntaned her skin. She was rebellious. She allowed herself to be raped by Lincoln. Much like the way he allowed his "K" to be gang-raped by Japanese soldiers. The house fire symbolizes Hata's metamorphosis. He discovers that he loves his grandchild despite his make up. He discovers the mall of wrong neighborhood. He sits with black families at the beach. He blesses the marriage betweeb Liv and Ronny. Finally he seeks forgiveness from Sunny and "K". Hata ceases his search for the perfect niche, and instead tries to become a thread in a more colorful social fabric. That is my take of the story and, hopefully, I share that view with the author.
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Summary: A compelling story skillfully told
Review: With tender descriptive words which flow almost effortlessly but with great skill, Lee has written a moving story of cultural alienation, loneliness and pathos of a transplanted Japanese-Korean who starts life anew in a small town in America. Treadng lightly,as if sensitive to possibly unleashing the full fury of prejudice against Asians, his main character, Doc Hata, succeeds in business but fails as an adopted father and in his latter years, while recovering from an accident, has to cope with his morally questionable role as an officer in the Japanese Army during the war.It is easy to see why this novel has received such high praise.
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Summary: Could have been a short story
Review: Franklin Hata was a profoundly annoying and pathetic character. I think that the author is trying to portray him as a thoughtful, sensitive, good man yet his actions portray him as one lacking strength of character and the ability to love. He let so many opportunities to love and to understand others pass him by that I found him to be a pain in the neck. Maybe a focus on plot instead of character would have saved this book - that's why I would have probably enjoyed it in a short story format.
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Summary: Intriguing!
Review: The author provides a thought-provoking examination of how one Oriental man conducts his life in order to be accepted and deemed "proper" by others of his community. Parts of the story seem a bit hard to follow because of movement back and forth in time, occasional significant scenes too sketchily described, and lack of important history (especially Sunny's childhood). Nevertheless, the novel succeeds in its beautiful use of language and ability to evoke a wide range of emotions as it poignantly examines one man's feelings. It is an attention-getting, fascinating story, especially about the comfort girls of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. The novel makes a major contribution to American literature about the Asian immigrant experience.
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Summary: A wonderful "little" book
Review: Occasionally I enjoy reading what I call "little" books: works of fiction that haven't received great publicity, and that aren't of the mega-selling, blockbuster type. A book of quiet prose, with flashes of lyricism in the writing. I happened upon "The English Patient" well before the movie was made, and found it to be a book of that type. So also would be, to me "Snow Angels". This work is one to read in a quiet corner, savoring all of the many nuances in it. A recounting of a life well-lived, but only in the shadow of great events, and in later years, a self-effacing existence. There is much sorrow and tragedy in this work, but also, I feel, an ultimate redemption and triumph of the spirit. It's worth reading.
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Summary: Worth making it thru the difficult spots
Review: Chang-rae Lee's second novel is a wonderful, beautifully-written novel that read more like a memoir than a novel. Franklin "Doc" Hata (Korean by birth, but adopted and raised as a Japanese) moves to Bedley Run in upstate New York in 1963. There he opens Sunny Medical Supply, a medical and surgical supply store that becomes an informal clinic. From behind the counter, he dispenses free medical advice. Not a doctor by profession, Doc was, however, trained as a medical officer in the Imperial Army. Thirty years later, he is now retired and spends his days enjoying his status as a respected elder member of community, taking long walks, lap swimming in the pool behind his house, and checking up on friends and business acquanticies. However, a small houe fire nearly kills him. Overcome with smoke inhalation, he is rescued by Liv Crawford,a persistent real estate agent who is desperately trying to convince the seventy-year-old man that his home is just too big. While spending several days in the hospital, Doc must come to terms with the relationships in his life. Never one to seek the company of women, and a life-long bachelor, Doc regrets being unable to save his first (and really only) love, Kkutaeh, from her fate as a comfort woman during World War II. Then there is ther mid-life realtionship with the late Mary Burns, a neighbor in Bedley Run. The most important relationship that he evaluates is the one he had with his adopted Japanese daughter, Sunny. The two never got along. Doc doesn't understand where he went wrong. why couldn't the Japanese adoption agency given a single father a son; he'd have been much more capable of raising a son than a daughter. He gave her everything, but as she grows up, she gets involved with unsavory characters and drugs. Doc doesn't know why she became so hateful and distant and ran away at eighteen. These are questions that Doc know will never be answered. Doc accidentally discovers that Sunny, who he hasn't seen in thirteen years, is living and working in the run-down neighboring community of Beddington. He also discovers that he is the grandfather of a six-year-old boy. After he learns of Thomas' existence, Doc goes out of his way to make contact with Sunny. She recultantly allows them to see each other, and soon the emotional distant falls away. The characters in this novel, especially Doc, are complex, full of intricies that are not easily defined. There are two problems with this book. Kkutaeh and Mary's scenes are chronological and easy to follow. Sunny's tale is that like of her life with Doc: chaotic, tumultuous amd difficult for the reader to follow. The other problem deals with the book's time structure. Doc supposedly meets Sunny thirteen years after she has left him, but when he meets her and Thomas, she is only twenty-three years old. Just a little mathematical error on the author and editor's parts. But it's still worth the read. The tone and feel of the novel are like a life well-lived. Readers will be sorry when the book ends and he/she must give up a new found friendship with Doc Hata.
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Summary: A gentle soul
Review: Doc Hata is a gentle man with a split personality. Brought up Korean, he tries to fit into the Japanese army - and fails. Coming to Westchester County, he tries to be "American" - and fails. His gentleness really is the cowardice to face things as they are. Even with his daughter - he fails. Doc Hata is a Walter Mitty who dreams that he is a good soldier, an accepted American, a dutiful father. The whole book is a dream and should not be taken literally. The author weaves a wonderful net, in superb language and meticulous attention to detail. Maybe the book was promoted wrong and readers expected something more down to earth.
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Summary: A new voice
Review: The beauty of this book is the author's ability to maintain the voice of a restrained very self contained elderly man. In many ways the book resembles Remains of the Day in its recreation of the inner life of a person whose external appearance would suggest a very tranquil psyche. The parallel plots in the past and present is a device that will be familiar to readers of Possession or Snow falling on cedars. he ending is heart wrenching. But he prose doesn't skip a beat. I found it a totally engaging, believable and affecting book.
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Summary: Reviewed by Bookreporter.com
Review: Chang-rae Lee's second novel, A GESTURE LIFE, covers some of the same territory as his first --- namely, the difficulties encountered by an outsider in our melting pot of a country. Like the narrator of NATIVE SPEAKER, Lee's debut novel, Franklin Hata suffers from a nearly incapacitating sense of reserve. Respected and accepted in his town of Bedley Run, the recently retired Franklin opens this book with quiet reflections on his place in life. The language is careful and wisely restrained, almost wistful in the manner of Fitzgerald. "I think one person can hardly understand why another has conducted his life in such a way, how he came to commit certain actions and not others, whether he looks upon the past with mostly pleasure or equanimity or regret." This early decorous pace is deceptive, however, and as we follow Franklin through his daily regimen, the tattered edges of his life gradually begin to show through. A late life romance fallen apart and an adopted Korean daughter named Sunny whose bitter rebellion has hurt and confused him; these elements of his American life are revealed more with a sense of fatalism than any anger or disbelief. His stoic, unemotional stance seems surreally distant, until the story of Franklin's service as a medic in World War II emerges in the second third of the novel. One reason this novel is on so many top ten lists for 1999 is the subtlety with which Lee recounts Franklin's memories of the war. The horror of many war stories resides in the atrocities that the opposing sides inflict on each other, yet man's inhumanity to woman is the central theme of Franklin's experience. The comfort women, as they were called, were essentially kidnapped from their homes in Korea and brought to the camps, where their service to the war effort consisted of serving as sex slaves to the soldiers. "Although it was the most naive and vacant of notions to think that anyone would willingly give herself to such a fate, like everyone else I had assumed the girls had indeed been 'volunteers', as they were always called. To the men in the queue, they were nothing, or less than nothing; ..." Young Franklin is assigned to guard one of the girls, whom he calls K, for his Captain's exclusive use. Over the course of her confinement, he falls in love with this desperate girl, with predictably tragic consequences. As he describes his anguished feelings for K, the reader begins to understand what it has cost Franklin merely to survive with his sanity intact. The relationship between Franklin's past and his Bedley Run present is another intriguing aspect of the novel. It is easy to see a substitute for his beloved K in his adoption of a Korean child, yet his emotional scars prevent him from being an effective father. He sees where he could and should be more insistent, but he always chooses the easiest, least unpleasant path. The consequences of fully committing to an impulse may leave one outside the polite norm of society, and that is a choice that Franklin is unable to make. Ultimately, his truest desires are in conflict. "In an odd way, I think now that K wanted the same thing that I would yearn for all my days, which was her own place in the accepted order of things... All I wished for was to be part (if but a millionth) of the massing, and that I pass through with something more than a life of gestures." It is a measure of the satisfying complexity of this novel that we are left wondering whether he succeeds long after the last page has been turned. --- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman-Nicol for Bookreporter.
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Summary: Why Heinz made 57 varieties
Review: Whenever I read Amazon reader reviews I am amazed by the contrasts. How can a book evoke such opposite responses? I found "A Gesture Life" too distanced to be really enjoyable. I read the whole thing because it was considered by The New Yorker magazine to be on of 1999's five best novels. I would have to disagree. I simply could not connect to any of the characters. I recommend "Disgrace," by JM Coetze (Booker Prize winner for 1999) to anyone who wants to be really, deeply touched by the portrait of a man and his daugter.
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