The Fruit 'N Food: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Chang's candid portrayal of a dark urban world
Review: Enter Thomas Pak, isolated Korean-American set apart from the world by circumstance, by generational boundaries. He is an individual that becomes inextricably tied to the Fruit N' Food, a job that offers him human connections, as well as money, for a basic need: survival & life. However, the racial rage that envelops this mileu brings to it a certain sacrifice: racism begets racism in this world, and often brings down everyone within it. With a clear, meticulous literary voice, Chang describes this setting with a stylistic candor; bringing to the fore themes of the Asian "American-dream", race, hate and class struggle. Tom Pak is rendered through a Stranger-eque portrait with sometimes graphic observation, only for us to realize his lost role in a society that bewilders him even further.

Rating:
Summary: in the heart of the heart of the tension
Review: everyone's fighting the hell out of each other trying to get at that American Dream and it's not a pretty sight...crab cage with the claws out chopping and clamping and poor old Tom Pak is getting the crap beaten out of him...this is the closest i've seen to some writer getting at the screwed-up racial mess the cities are going through and i'm glad he wrote this...

Rating:
Summary: Similarities to THE STRANGER
Review: I kept thinking of Camus when I read this novel, but I don't think the existential underpinnings were fully explored by the author. I think he subordinated the idea of the quotidian existence for the flash and excitement of racial tension (and the boycotts). He also took Sartre's idea of NAUSEA a little too literally, I thought. Nevertheless, this was much more ambitious than most first novels coming out these days...