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

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: 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: 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.

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: 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: 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.