American Woman : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Loses its way
Review: "American Woman" is a fictional takeoff on the early 1970's Symbionese Liberation Army abduction of Patty Hearst. Left-wing radical Jenny Wong is on the run from the police in Upstate New York, trying to escape the fate of her soul mate, William, in jail for bombing draft offices. After most of the SLA-like group is slaughtered in a shoot-out with police, fellow radical and ex-lover Rob Frazer tracks her down to recruit her services in lending underground support to the three surviving members of the gang. In exchange for aid from Frazer and Jenny, the three warriors are to write their manifesto, a book that Frazer will get published to promote the cause and earn some money. But just as their plans ultimately unravel and their whereabouts are exposed to the authorities, Choi unravels and exposes the make-up and motivation of these complex characters.

From one POV, "American Woman" is a lyrical novel written with a unique voice. Choi is blessed with a substantial vocabulary and the natural gift of beautifully poetic sentence structure. Her tale is a literary examination of the human condition cleverly disguised as a contemporary suspense novel. The result is a moving and memorable installment of The Great American Novel. It hearkens back to a time when novels were written to be savored by the word in a comfortable chair, not skimmed by production company development departments looking for the next blockbuster film.

From another POV, this is a chick book, a young, idealist writer's concept of what a suspense novel should be: deep delving into emotions, motives, and page-long descriptions of scenes--and very light on action, dialogue, and ... suspense. The use of an uncommon narrative style and the quirky and seemingly backwards practice of throwing in characters long before introducing them to the reader adds an almost experimental quality to the book.

Enjoyment of American Woman will be a matter of taste. The whole point of writing the book may be lost on commercial fiction fans. The book plods along with a slow building of tension that might be expected to finally release in an ejaculation of thrilling drama at an intersection of these two POVs. But it doesn't happen. The climactic and potentially exciting moments are skipped over and suddenly treated as past tense. There is a great lesson in patience for the antsy fan of contemporary page-turners. For lovers of the pure literary novel there is ample reward for the anticipation. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of BIG ICE and WAKE UP DEAD

Rating:
Summary: Depends on your Point of View
Review: "American Woman" is a fictional takeoff on the early 1970's Symbionese Liberation Army abduction of Patty Hearst. Left-wing radical Jenny Wong is on the run from the police in Upstate New York, trying to escape the fate of her soul mate, William, in jail for bombing draft offices. After most of the SLA-like group is slaughtered in a shoot-out with police, fellow radical and ex-lover Rob Frazer tracks her down to recruit her services in lending underground support to the three surviving members of the gang. In exchange for aid from Frazer and Jenny, the three warriors are to write their manifesto, a book that Frazer will get published to promote the cause and earn some money. But just as their plans ultimately unravel and their whereabouts are exposed to the authorities, Choi unravels and exposes the make-up and motivation of these complex characters.

From one POV, "American Woman" is a lyrical novel written with a unique voice. Choi is blessed with a substantial vocabulary and the natural gift of beautifully poetic sentence structure. Her tale is a literary examination of the human condition cleverly disguised as a contemporary suspense novel. The result is a moving and memorable installment of The Great American Novel. It hearkens back to a time when novels were written to be savored by the word in a comfortable chair, not skimmed by production company development departments looking for the next blockbuster film.

From another POV, this is a chick book, a young, idealist writer's concept of what a suspense novel should be: deep delving into emotions, motives, and page-long descriptions of scenes--and very light on action, dialogue, and ... suspense. The use of an uncommon narrative style and the quirky and seemingly backwards practice of throwing in characters long before introducing them to the reader adds an almost experimental quality to the book.

Enjoyment of American Woman will be a matter of taste. The whole point of writing the book may be lost on commercial fiction fans. The book plods along with a slow building of tension that might be expected to finally release in an ejaculation of thrilling drama at an intersection of these two POVs. But it doesn't happen. The climactic and potentially exciting moments are skipped over and suddenly treated as past tense. There is a great lesson in patience for the antsy fan of contemporary page-turners. For lovers of the pure literary novel there is ample reward for the anticipation. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of BIG ICE and WAKE UP DEAD

Rating:
Summary: Real Life is Stranger Than Fiction
Review: 'American Woman' is essentially about one woman, a 'benign' terrorist who, at the beginning of the book is living in a small town as a restorer in one of the town's historic homes. Jenny is her name. We learn that her boyfriend is in jail, through letters that they exchange. He was a terrorist involved in several bombings, captured by the police and though she was an accomplice, she has managed to escape apprehension. They are part of a cadre of terrorists, all known to one another, and all looking out for one another. Their most notorious act has been to kidnap a wealth newspaper tycoon's granddaughter, who, through ideals or indoctrination becomes part of the cadre. The book begins with a police shoothout of one of their safehouses, where 7 of them get killed and 3 escape, one of whom is the converted heiress. The book's story is the story of these three; their desperate flight to a small farm in New York; the involvement of Jenny who leaves her little town and restoration work to become the 'caretaker' of the three; the botched efforts to eke out a blockbuster thriller, a world-shaking masterpiece from the experiences of these essentially illiterate and inarticulate people (pencils and legal pads supplied, of course); the robbery and killing of a grocery store owner for the money the book was supposed to make; the separation of Jenny and the heiress from the others and their return to San Francisco to a normal life amongst those they know, trading recipes, growing vegetables in their back yard, and lamenting the fact that women have never been the leaders but the "helpmeets" of men (not helpmates, mind you); and then their final capture by the police. The author has so thoroughly destructured the main character, Jenny, that when, at the end, she tells of the Asian community raising thousands of dollars for Jenny's defense, I found this reaction quite simply astonishing, and completely unbelievable, when, in fact, this did actually happen in real life, though I was not aware of it when I read the book. Real life, then, is stranger than fiction, particularly so, with everyone and everything related to this long tale of misadventures and mishaps.

Rating:
Summary: suspenseful story
Review: A leisurely paced yet suspenseful story about 1970s radicals based on the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: When do we know we are doing the right thing?
Review: As a Brit I have to confess that I wasn't sure I was going to like this book because the title was enough to frighten me away! I mean what do I know about American women? However the blurb intrigued me and I do like books that are "different" and thought provoking so I took the metaphorical bull by the horns and settled down to read it, expecting to read it over a course of several days. All I can say is, "What a gem of a book!" and please can Miss Choi write to my employers and explain to them why I was three hours late to work, it's her fault, I was so engrossed I lost track of time!

I won't lie to you and say that this is an easy book to read, it isn't but it is worth the effort and it is strangely gripping, and even frightening in parts. The protagonist (and heroine) Jenny is suposedly a radical living in a time of political, economical and social upheaval. It is the 1970s and the world is no longer made up patriots and nationalists. Students are demanding change, and European ideas and politics are invading the consciousness of an insulated nation. Jenny herself is the daughter of a Japanese American man who suffered internment in the 1940s and though in the beginning she calls herself a radical, she has serious doubts about the things she has done in the past and what she is about to do. Herself a fugitive from the law, (she helped in a bombing of some Draft Offices) she is called out of hiding to help three young radicals, one of them recently the kidnap victim of the other two. It here we are introduced to Pauline, fragile, confused, and perhaps more dedicated to the cause than her once-upon-a-time captors who treat her with benign contempt mingled with reverence.

Often humourous, sometimes tragic, we are drawn into the shadowy world that Jenny and her friends inhabit. Hiding out in a farmhouse with the three dysfunctional radicals, who sprout Marxism and put themselves through harsh physical training for the war that they are sure that they will have fight in when the time comes, Jenny finds herself questioning her own ideals, along with the lack of compromise on all sides, both within the establishment she despises and the young radicals themselves. Jenny even questions even the passion that drives her charges along with the right way forward in a world built on lies, hypocrisy, racism and social injustice.

As Jenny and Pauline forge a tentative friendship, perhaps built on their mutual similarities and differences, Jenny reminisces about her life, her love affairs and her bittersweet relationship with her proud but deeply cynical father.

Jenny is very much an anti-heroine, both loved and despised in the same breath but she instils sympathy from the reader, where as Pauline is more of a spoilt little rich girl trying to break free from the constraints of her upbringing with only a glimmer of sympathy from the reader because of her emotional fragility.

There are many other interesting characters in the book like Jenny's ex-lover/friend Frazer who brings her out of hiding in the first place, and the other two radicals (once Pauline's captors) who want to change the world in a day but mostly this book is about Jenny, and Pauline with everything else weaving its way around them to bring the story, plot and climax of the novel its final conclusion.

An intellectually stimulating, intriguing and compulsive read is my final word on this novel. "American Women" can be read by readers of any nationality because all of us, young or old can remember a time when we thought the world we lived in could be changed beyond all recognition by the power of our voices, the passion of our beliefs, and the rebellious acts of our bodies, only to shed bitter tears of maturity when we realised that the establishment we sought to defeat wasn't going to fall to its knees and change was a concept of the mind rather than a physical reality.

Rating:
Summary: At last, 'generation x' is showing some sense!
Review: As an older American, I enjoyed this book so very much, because it requires that its readers take seriously some issues that are very pressing: the problem of radical activity on the part of our young people. The book takes place in the nineteen-seventies, but it is as timeless as Greek Tragedy in the way that it demonstrates that spoiled, overindulged children can turn on the hand that has fed them and bite it, voraciously.

Maybe this is the sort of book that appeals to older people. I didn't think this sort of morality was fashionable in the 'generation x' fiction of today and I'm positively delighted to see a book that presents us with characters unashamedly portrayed not only as living, breathing persons but as cautionary archetypes as well. The Patricia Hearst case may seem "funny" to some people, but to those of us who are older it was tragic and heartbreaking to see a beautiful young girl, who stood for so many other beautiful young girls of that troubled time, traveling the wrong path and getting mixed up with the wrong crowd.

In this book, Jenny Shimada may have had better reasons for going astray, and she may have had more second thoughts, but even so, here is a beautiful girl who turns her back on a God-given artistic talent to become a bombthrowing radical. I just shook my head it was such a shame.

And now that we have the shameful sight of hoodlums breaking up trade organization meetings and such in beautiful American cities like Seattle, (not to mention young people turning to terrorism in the middle east and Afghanistan and such places) and young people protesting against our armed forces, I am so glad to see that Susan Choi has turned her own considerable artistic talent toward writing a wonderful book about how impulsive choices and temptation during tempestuous times can lead to very big trouble and heartbreak and trouble with the law too. I hope this book wins every award available. ...

Rating:
Summary: Ferocious Masterwork
Review: I can't wait for the movie of this great American Book. I'm sure that like the novel it will have great sweep and ambition, while maintaining a surprising intimacy as quiet as a rodent or other small but unyucky animal you might place in your pocket for a walk or to show your most intimate and understanding friends. I missed these people so much when I'd finished this book that I went out, bought some clothes and wigs and such, and walked around the house pretending that I was each of them in turn. It was great. But though I had a good time pretending to be Susan Choi imagining her way into the lives and loves of the SLA, there was no way I could create, as Choi so effortlessly does, the pregnant boredom that encases wild-eyed people, solo in their own orbits, who linger at the edges of things like stagehands during an interminable performance of "Twilight of the Gods," waiting for their own actions to rebound upon them. But during such slightly draggy bits, Choi acts like the mentally challenged but always cunning Monet, spreading the pallete of her words across the canvas of her page in order to paint a bright picture of nature, both in the midst of weather and other such occurences and also just sitting there. Some startling descriptions there; had me jumpy for a couple of days. It's great stuff if you like to read passages about nature and trees in the middle of a book about urban guerrillas. It's just another of the quiet and inobtrusive ways Susan Choy lets you know that she can write. In short, this book seized my by the throat, it is weighted by a rock-solid lyricism that feels useful, like a gearbox, but beautiful at the same time, like a gearbox with flowers painted on it by the canvas of a writer's beautiful words. As another reviewer said, this is prose that makes you want to hide from your family. Never does the prose detract from the cold hard truths, pragmatic and idealistic, that the story delivers. I learned a lot about the sixties, even though it takes place during the seventies. That is thanks to Choy's command of backstory, and I'm happy to report that this book can be read by readers of any nationality, so long as they are fluent in the English language. When I was done, I shed bitter tears of maturity. I turned the pages with my stomach in knots, once I realized that the establishment I'd sought to defeat wasn't going to fall to its knees and change. After all, change is a concept of the mind rather than a physical reality, unless of course you live in sub-Saharan Africa. Then you get plenty of change, in spades.

Rating:
Summary: American Archetype
Review: I found this book to be a delightful exploration of one of contemporary culture's most intriguing and interesting figures: Carmen Electra. Few people recall Carmen's beginnings as a "revolutionary" emerging from that cauldron of leftist activity, Berkeley, but now this young author, Susan Choi, has made a point of relocating all of the information concerning Electra's early years as the gun-toting Circe all sensible men fled from in fear and most of the rest of us sagged, slavering, to our knees before. I should know. I was then an architecture student at Stanford, a dazed and amused observer of the passing scene. This was before I lost my eyesight and became the only licensed member of AIA and APA who can take a dog on the bus. Yes, Carmen's picture popped up all over the campus, especially the famed "Carminootsky" shot of her toting a .30 caliber rifle with a Maglite soldered to the barrel, wearing an Ermine cape and a watch cap with the words "Happiness is a Warm Puppy" embroidered thereon. Those were hard times, difficult times, confusing times, and those of us who remember them correctly know that Susan Choi, too, has remembered them correctly though in her case it's not exactly memory, more like research. Which adds up to the same thing in the end. Heck, what do I know. Great book for Carmen Electra fans.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: I have to agree with the reviewer a while back, who observed that making Shimada a daughter of camp internees who ALSO spent her childhood in Hiroshima and who ALSO later became involved with the S.L.A. is just a little too much. The first fact alone would have been enough. Choi was smart to withhold this information until relatively late in the novel, but even this structural decision can't keep Shimada's psychological trajectory from feeling too tidy.

Otherwise, I think this novel features fine (but not brilliant) psychological insight into the characters, solid plot construction, and most of all, an ambitious exploration of large questions regarding class, race, gender, political and social change, idealism and "American" self-invention. Choi's intelligence is a true pleasure, and this is her greatest strength.

However, the actual writing is a sticking point for me. Sentence by sentence, page by page, chapter by chapter, the novel feels insufficiently compressed, which makes it far too slow. The weak passages water down the strong passages. (If it had been 70-100 pages shorter, the book would be much stronger.) And sorry to say this, but stylistically, I find the writing unmemorable. There are far more gifted stylists in her generation, such as Lahiri, Haslett, Diaz, Ali, etc. But substance is her strength, like I said. I definitely look forward to the next book.

Rating:
Summary: What an amazing book!
Review: I haven't read a more gripping, gorgeously written book in years. Jenny is an unforgettable character, beautifully observed, and the story of her friendship with a fellow fugitive is as compelling as it is heartbreaking. Susan Choi's observations about youth and radicalism are so original that they shed new light on the 1960s themselves. I could not recommend it more highly.