Rating: 
Summary: Wow - engrossing, thoughtful, artfully told
Review: Susan Choi's latest novel completely took me by the throat from its opening pages to the final scene. While one could say this is a fictionalized account of the Patty Hearst kidnapping, it focuses mostly on Jenny Shimada (modeled after real-life revolutionary Wendy Yoshimura), a fugitive who is entrusted with the well-being of three scraggly revolutionaries on the run, one of which turns out to be the heiress. Jenny's relationship with Pauline (the Patty Hearst character), a woman who is both victim and victimizer, forms the core of the story, although the novel covers much more ground than that. Choi details the specifics of radical politics in the 1970's, the precautions and paranoia of fugitives, the realities of class and racial differences, as well as pivotal moments in the lives of her characters. The story is richly imagined, with startling descriptions filling the gaps between facts. By evoking the time of Vietnam War protests, free love, hatred of class oppression, and the overwhelming urge to change the world, Choi provides a touching framework to the story of a kidnapped heiress and the people who believed in their right to "convert" her.Choi's writing is exceptional - it is weighted by a hard lyricism, the kind that feels practical and beautiful at once. The characters are fully imagined and engaging. Even Pauline, who is at first overshadowed by her captors/comrades, becomes astoundingly real. Jenny, though, is Choi's real accomplishment: she is a woman who embraces the radical politics of class and yet has the strength to question them. Intelligent, independent, somehow both a pragmatist and an idealist, she is a memorable creation that gives this novel a vibrancy it might not have had otherwise. I highly recommend this novel for anyone looking for a thought-provoking and skillfully told novel. Those who are looking for something fast-paced should steer clear, however, since the strength of this novel lies more in quiet moments than in action.
Rating:
Summary: Best book of the year.
Review: The previous reader must have some kind of personal ax to grind. This is one of the most memorable books I've ever read, and certainly the best book I've read so far this year. This is a book about bombings and kidnappings and guerrilla organizations and terror and a millionaire heiress. Fun! And very serious, too. It all takes place in the early 70s, and the way it is written, sometimes that seems like a thousand years ago and sometimes it seems like it could all be happening now. The book may be a historical novel, but it is very contemporary. (In fact, a former radical similar to the ones in this book--Kathy Boudin--was just let out of jail this week.)The author takes a close, scary look at what goes on in the mind of somebody who wants to blow things up, even kill innocent people, in the name of their beliefs. Unlike, say, our President, she's actually interested in what would make somebody become a terrorist. American Woman brilliantly opens up the psychology of people who believe that their own rightness puts them above ordinary morality. This is a subject as important in 2003 as it was in 1974.
Rating:
Summary: an urgent, profound mystery
Review: This book is a gorgeous, unpredictable mystery--I turned the pages with my stomach in knots, wondering what would happen next. The story is at once familiar --the radicals with their VWs, the description of San Francisco and Berkeley in the late '60s--and deeply moving. Choi writes about these hopeful, striving characters with honesty and quiet decency, and in telling their stories raises unsettling questions about the stories we see being played out on the news every day.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated
Review: This book is overrated. The writing style is verbose, the dialog limited, and the characters are undeveloped. All of the characters sound the same. There is no character development. The author needs to go back to school. Some of the sentences are very carefully crafted, even poetic but other than that the book is overrated. The book's greatest strength is that is based on a fascinating event. It's puzzling that a young author would attempt this topic. At times, I thought how could she have possibly have understood this movement without living through it? Her depiction of that time period is oversimplified and trivializes history. If you are bored and have extra time, the book is entertaining due to the Patty Hearst theme. Otherwise, I would save my money and time. The author is a frustrated poetic and not a novelist.
Rating:
Summary: One of 2004's Best
Review: This is a fascinating, fascinating novel!! I disagree with those who claim the book stints on the 1970's feel. No, the book is not stuffed full of period details, it is not "Tales of the City". Sure there's a shag carpet here and there, but Choi's story is much more timeless than that. She is an adept and assured novelist who writes with intelligence and grace.
I was about as (un)interested in reading a fictionalization of the SLA and Patty Hearst as I had been in reading a book about the kidnapping of Japanese diplomats in South America when I sat down with "Bel Canto" by Anne Patchett, and that book still leaves a potent memory of its utterly incandescent prose and calm dignity. Likewise, I was absorbed from the first page to the last of "American Woman". Choi has fashioned her own enthralling fiction from the bones of the Hearst story and created a rich reading experience. This is definetely one of my top novels of the year!
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This is a must-read. I liked Susan Choi's first novel very much, and recommended it to a number of people, but "American Woman" is fabulous at a whole different level. Beautifully written; compelling psychology; great settings; intense & fast-paced plot. This is really on my short list of impressive MAJOR novels by American novelists: it's not to say that they're always my favorites, but Choi's novel deserves to be compared to Franzen's The Corrections, to Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, to Whitehead's John Henry Days. Ambitious but also brilliantly executed. You must read this book!
Rating:
Summary: American Masterpiece
Review: This is an exquisite novel; as viscerally thrilling as it is intellectually stimulating. Choi masters the framework of relatively recent history (the 70s) with considerable ease and skill while simultaneously drawing a handful of wonderfully compelling characters. She examines - through this story of a young radical on the run with a Patty Hearst-like-heiress-turned-revolutionary - the making of a radical mind and the powerful impact a movement at a particular time can have on an individual. There is great care here not to lampoon or satirize, she takes these people seriously, and the effect is that within a story that has great sweep and ambition, there is surprising intimacy. You miss these people when you finish the book in ways you didn't expect to.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite memorable
Review: This novel is solid and well-crafted, but dull and forgettable, unfortunately. After hearing about the premise, I was excited to read it. But it suffers from a few too many cliches, trite conclusions, a general lack of freshness. Having read and enjoyed her first novel, I guess I expected much more from her second.
Rating: 
Summary: Loses its way
Review: Two major flaws: first, in choosing to tell the tale from the point of view of Jenny Shimada (modeled on the real-life Wendy Yoshimura), Choi shifts the narrative from the perspective of Rob Frazer (Jack Scott, in real life), a much more interesting character, burdened with flaws and internal conflicts. Certainly Choi seems much more interested in Rob Frazer than in the irritating rectitude of Shimada. Second, I have to agree with the reviewer who says that Choi captures absolutely none of the flavor of the 1970s. It seems to me that Choi may have made the decision to avoid period touches altogether, worried as she might have been that they would ring false. However, the result of this compromise is a book with no period character whatsoever. Our sole markers of the era are occasional references to the date and the presence, in a supporting role, of an old VW Bug. I don't mean the book should be clotted with popcult references, like Stephen King, but the sense I got is that Choi didn't even bother to check out what was on TV, on the radio, or what was in the news. The false sense is given of history on a momentous scale--VIETNAM! NIXON! WATERGATE! Not only does this avoid the sort of minor quotidian stuff that really would have underlined the existence and background of these petit-bourgeois revolutionaries manque, but it seems lazy. Some details seem just flat-out wrong. Roof parties in Berkeley? Not that I recall, but maybe I'm wrong. The writing is OK. Choi is good when she keeps it simple, she has quite a dry sense of humor that she doesn't use nearly enough. There are altogether too many creative-writing-y reveries in the book--there's one about matches, you know, paper matches, that had me howling--that should have been blue penciled right away. Anyway, this book is OK. You want to like it because it is, as another half-hearted reviewer put it, so earnest and heartfelt. On the other hand, the book unfolds so narrowly, you wonder why Choi selected such sweeping source material, rich with so much possibility, if all she intended to do was write a claustrophobic little character study. You can see her shoving intriguing possibilities to the sidelines to concentrate on the frankly boring relationship between Jenny Shimada and "Pauline" (the Patty Hearst character). Who cares!, I wanted to shout. Tell me more about the cadre! Tell me more about their goals. Are they ridiculous? Are they righteous? Is it ambiguous? Tell me about Rob Frazer. Are his motives selfish? Tell me more about Pauline--about her ambivalence, her relationship not with her old patrician class vs. her new revolutionary vanguard, but with actual people in her lives past and present. How is Jenny a link between the two? Etc. This is a very well meaning book by a sincere author with some talent. I detect the ham handed interference of an editor, and the effacement of absolutely anything that might suggest, legally, that the book is based on the adventures of Patricia Hearst with the Symbionese Liberation Army leads me to believe that HarperCollins had corporate rather than first amendment lawyers go over the manuscript. Too bad on both counts. I'd've loved to see the "real" book.
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