Rating: 
Summary: American Winner
Review: I never write reviews on line, but I have to respond to the inane criticism, and dismissive tone of "Excellent Premise But..." First the writer suggests that Choi's prose is "writing-programish" and "garden variety" (perhaps Ithaca hails from a writing program, or is just a writer with an axe to grind?)I would suggest that the prose is lean, polished and razor sharp. It draws no attention to itself (unlike writing-programish writing)its tone accomplishes in the reader the effect of being in hiding, forced to disappear, as it were, in plain sight. Never does the prose detract from the story, never are we aware of Choi's hand, or her voice telling us what to think. Shimada is alone on the page. I also must take issue with the criticism that "a little more humor would have made the pages turn faster." Is that what great art is supposed to do? I would argue that Choi's book is an American classic in the making. That it is the book of the year. (I just tried to read Jonathan Lethem's new book and it is no where this good) Also, is the speed at which one can turn pages now the measure of good literature? Ridiculous, perhaps Ithaca should stick to watching Patty Hearst movies.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of effort, little payoff
Review: I read "American Woman" without knowing anything about it, and was shocked to discover somewhere along the way that it was supposed to be set in the 70s. The author makes no attempt to ground the novel in a period or mindset as others have noted, and the result is a very writerly, turgid ordeal. I kept going, hoping to find a resonant character or interesting idea, to little avail. By the end, however, I did work up some outrage--fury that writing programs and their progeny have so denatured and disemboweled American fiction. Fight the power! Shut down Iowa Writers Workshop!
Rating:
Summary: I beg to differ.
Review: I think a novel of "carefully crafted, even poetic" sentences is always worth reading, particularly if the book "is based on a fascinating event." The author's youth is in her favor: the subject and the times beg to be treated by someone who isn't emotionally invested in them; who isn't interested in enshrining the Movement in a fictional monument.
Rating:
Summary: I beg to differ.
Review: I think a novel of "carefully crafted, even poetic" sentences is always worth reading, particularly if the book "is based on a fascinating event." The author's youth is in her favor: the subject and the times beg to be treated by someone who isn't emotionally invested in them; who isn't interested in enshrining the Movement in a fictional monument.
Rating:
Summary: A stunning book
Review: I thought I knew the Patty Hearst story pretty well, but I was riveted by this novel. It's not just that it's told from the perspective of someone usually considered a minor character in the affair--a young Japanese-American woman who's on the lam for her own reasons--or that the writing is great, though it is. Choi captures a moment in the seventies when politics led some young people to make disastrous, brutal decisions. But the most interesting choices in the book have to do with love and friendships--with how they're formed, and how they're betrayed. Can't wait for the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Premise. But.
Review: I thought this was a sensitive, heartfelt, sincere, and thoroughly admirable novel, an excellent example of contemporary literary portraiture. If Choi's writing is somewhat garden-variety, very writing-program-ish, her perceptions certainly are very attuned to her subject, and I think she did a great job of imagining her way into the conflicted minds of her subjects. I have two reservations, though: first of all, while I didn't live through the Patty Hearst era, I have done some reading on the subject, and one thing that struck me while I was reading Patty Hearst's own book was that life in the SLA was very funny, at least as Hearst describes it. Of course there was plenty of fear and anger, but "General" Teko and "General" Yolanda sound hilarious. Now, this book is very, very serious. I guess I can't take issue with a writer for deciding how to handle his or her material, but I think a little more humor would have made the pages turn faster. Secondly, the book sort of falls apart toward the end. I know that there are lots of gaps in the story of Patty Hearst's "missing year," but I guess I think the author should have just made up more things if necessary. On the whole, though, this book is better than the movie "Patty Hearst."P.S.--I guess if I don't give a book five stars (i.e., place it in the same class as Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, etc.) I get to suffer the speculations of other amateur book reviewers concerning my life and motivations, such as those offered by "a reader." Sorry for not joining the trend toward hyperbolic praise. Three stars seems fine for a good book. As for the snide reference to "Patty Hearst movies," well, other than Paul Schrader's movie I didn't have anything else to directly compare it to, unless there's some other Patty Hearst book out there.
Rating:
Summary: No way this is the book of the year
Review: I won't say that Susan Choi's new book is bad, but in my opinion, it is neither a masterpieice nor the book of the year. In fact, it is rather arrogant and presumptous to call it so. It is very clear that the book is by no means without flaws -- it's preachy and self-righeous and didactic. When I read a novel, I need to care about its main chracter: feel what he/she feels and sympathize with his/her predicament. Unfortunately, I came away with a feeling that Jenny is not a real person, but a prototype.
Rating: 
Summary: Deals with subject matter in an interesting way
Review: Some of the reviewers here have a problem with Choi's narrow focus on Jenny and seemed to have wanted a big picture story fictionalizing the SLA and the Hearst kidnapping, but hey-- that's not the book she wrote. She wrote this one, and it is a fine look at it from an interesting perspective.
The main character, Jenny, becomes caretaker and friend of the (maybe and maybe not) brainwashed media-heiress, Pauline, after the last remaining members of the militant group that kidnapped her commit another crime that horrifies Jenny into begging Pauline to split from them with her. Jenny and Pauline become best friends and much of the story is devoted to their friendship.
I do think Jenny was a good character to focus on because of her unique point of view. She was outside the militant group enough to make observations about them while at the same time close enough to them (what was left of them) to get to know them well. Having been a radical herself she can relate to their goals and motivations, but seeing their crimes gives her pause about her own youthful acts of violence.
The writing is good. There are occasional clunky passages, but they're not terribly frequent. I do agree with the reviewer who said a little more 70s flavor would have been nice.
Rating:
Summary: Too Narrow a Focus for Me
Review: Sorry, but I can well remember the Patty Hearst case and while I think Susan Choi has done a good job of focusing on a very small aspect of the case, by fictionalizing the involvement of Wendy Yoshimura with the Simbionese Liberation Army, she's left out all too much by focusing on a single tree and missing the forest. I might even say that by placing an emphasis on some really marginal issues of identity politics Ms. Choi has entirely missed the point of her material. The ironies of Wendy Yoshimura's (here "Jenny Shimada") experiences in the U.S.A. as the daughter of relocation camp internees who then spent her childhood living in Hiroshima are provocative and sharp, but to have drawn a conclusion from that regarding her (much later) involvement with the S.L.A. is just a bit too pat. The Patty Hearst case was all about the death of the 60's and the beginning of the "Me" generation made famous in the 70's. It involved everyone from black nationalist prisoners to children of the middle class to radical academics to icons of privelege like the famous Hearst family. I was looking forward to seeing all of these figures and events being portrayed on a broad novelistic canvas, like Don DeLillo did in Underworld, and instead I found a narrowly focused book that is just a little too _calm_ for me, especially considering that it's about really crazy people who played with guns and bombs and planned to overthrow the govt. of the U.S.A. I honestly think that in choosing to leave out so much of this exciting historical story that Ms. Choi has done the material an injustice. It is not a bad book by any means but simply not the book I would have hoped to see dealing with the story of Patricia Hearst.
Rating:
Summary: Time Warp: An Inside View of the History of Radicalism
Review: Susan Choi's first novel THE FOREIGN STUDENT signaled the arrival of a sensitive new voice unafraid to tackle tender issues of national guilt and immigrant isolation in the Land of Dreams. In her new novel AMERICAN WOMAN Choi further establishes her credentials as an important American writer who manages to research historical data so well that turning that media blitz-hype into a novel results in a compelling probe of the minds of youth at odds with the society that raised them. Succinctly based on the 1974 SLA kidnapping of Patricia Hearst and its aftermath, Choi has played out this tragic but intensely credible bit of American history in the form of a series of character studies of those involved. The main character Jenny is a Japanese American girl involved with the radical groups who struck out against the Vietnam War, the hypocrisy of a 'democratic' America, and the abuse of the police in neglecting the poor people of this country. Choi's Jenny makes us re-examine the motivation that perpetrated the radicals of that period and if this book has no other result than to cause us all to re-think the important role of students who questioned the state of the Union, then that raised flag would be sufficient. But this finely wrought novel goes beyond that exploratory surgery and finds analogies to the reactions to the interment of the Japanese during WW II (Jenny's father was one of those interred and greatly influenced her perception of right and wrong in America), to the effect of isolation (read imprisonment/segregation) on young minds at odds with the status quo, to the power of bonding between individuals whose common needs may in fact be disparate. AMERICAN WOMAN is a slow read: Choi knows how to create that pregnant ennui that encapsulates feral individuals awaiting the backlash of their actions. But during those slow pages Choi manages to spread her canvas on the page and paint immaculate images of nature at rest and at fury. In the end she gives us a group of people not all of whom we can admire (or even care for), but at the same time she molds thoughtful minds that accept abuse because of their beliefs, who continue to foster dreams against all plausible odds. And just when you may tire of the shenanigans of Choi's 'cast', you are reminded that this story on a different level DID happen. Stay with this book to the end and you will embrace or perhaps even question your own idealistic youth that dwells back there someplace in the 1970s.
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