Rating: 
Summary: Oh the humanity...
Review: I find it interesting that so many of the previous reviews of this book focus on the constraints a Communist society places on relationships. To me, the message was more about the tendancy for people to be disatisfied with what they have, never being fully happy in the moment. By always waiting for things to improve we can take the focus off how we are feeling in the moment and instead focus on how things will always be better in the future. Without gving anything away, let me say that I belive the end to this book demonstrates this perfectly.In conclusion, I enjoyed this book becuase it operated on a number of levels. It not only delivered a message about oppresive politcal systems, but also one about the basic defects of human nature.
Rating: 
Summary: pretty awful
Review: The only thing of value in this book is the background--China and the way things worked or didn't work in that country before and after Mao. But even that becomes tedious. The characters are about as interesting as stacked wood because wooden is what they are. You learn nothing about them from the way they act or speak. Everything is developed through questions they ask themselves and similar techniques that would earn a "C" in a college writing course. I think the author's background is what won him the award--not the book. After all it is chic of us to heap such honor on a recent arrival to our country. Nothing against that at all but lets be honest about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Swept away into a magical world in an unknown China
Review: "Waiting" grabbed me from the first page with its gripping and moving story of frail, mortal human beings in a China very much under the thumb of the Communists. For the first time I saw the people of China as PEOPLE not the faceless masses they are presented as in our media. Ha Jin's story is populated with human characters whose travails became my own as the plot progressed. This to me is the true test of any work of fiction - does it take you away, for a few hours, into a world whose characters' concerns become your own concerns and whose fate becomes, however briefly, your own? This book meets that test. Read it and enjoy something quite special. A very deserving winner of the National Book Award.
Rating:
Summary: Graceful storytelling
Review: The prose is straightforward, elegant, precise, and powerful in an understated way. The novel has little in the way of melodramatic twists and major revelations, so readers looking for them would do better looking elsewhere. Instead, "Waiting" is about helpless lives swept along by political tides, about promises kept but not fulfilled. It's a distinctive vision that rewards a careful reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Underwhelming
Review: Waiting is an easy read.Although I enjoyed the perspective and descriptive prose of a native of communist China, the story line was not challenging enough for me. The story seemed to become choppy and fall apart towards the end.The explanation of Manna's change in behavior towards the end was thin, too. I kept expecting for her to be disgnosed with a nervous disorder.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for the Point
Review: To me Waiting was a poor man's Remains of the Day, a story of life deferred because of the main character's willingness to conform to convention (in this case, the government of Communist China). For many years a man who has no sense of committment to anything but his advancement in a stultifying bureacratic world refuses to act on his love for a young woman. Life passes them both by. The communist mentality influences every aspect of their lives. The story is tediously slow, going over the same ground over & over. I subsequently read a book about the effects of the communtist mentality which moved me greatly and deepened my understanding of a people wounded psychologically, economically, and politically by the forces of communism--that was Memory of the Forest which is a beautifully written novel with beautiful character development and a gripping narrative. In Waiting you just wait for the characters to gain insight or to do something that is interesting, and it just doesn't happen. How did this book end up as a National Book Award finalist? Please explain.
Rating: 
Summary: I like "Ocean of Words" but not "Waiting"
Review: How can anyone call this even interesting writing? Manna and Lin, the protagonists, are two petty-minded, weak people who, to put it bluntly, deserve all their sufferings. To the misled readers, life is much more interesting in China, in reality or in fiction. Even under the most severe circumstances in that totalitarian state, people have been more adventurous, more courageous and have had more fun than those two losers. Up to page 185, this is a depressing, dreadful, slow-death-evoking tale. But I shall read on just to prove myself wrong. I am not holding my breath. Suggested antidotal reading: Wang Shuo's "Playing for Thrills" or "Please Don't Call Me Human"
Rating:
Summary: Waiting and waiting...
Review: I enjoyed the insight into Chinese culture. I bought this book as a gift for my wife for Christmas. My expectations were high about its creative content. I kept waiting and waiting for a climax which never came. I guess the author was quite ingenious to master the subject, story, and the book's readability into a waiting experience!
Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: I was really looking forward to reading this book, because it sounded like it would be very rewarding and thought-provoking. However, nothing about it convinced me that it is worthy of a National Book Award. The writing was elementary, unimpressive, and rather simple. While this made the book a fairly easy read, and while I never seriously thought of not finishing it, whenever the plot would build to some sort of climax (and there weren't any exciting ones, to be sure), the next section or chapter wouldn't deal with it. It was just on to the next thing, which was equally unexciting. I kept hoping something monumental would happen, but halfway through I realized that since the author told the reader the pivotal thing in the first pages of the book, there was nothing else to be told. It plodded along, from year to year, which is I guess the point of the book--that life goes on no matter how we try to change it--and when I reached the end, I was glad to have finished the book so I didn't have to read it anymore. The ending was disappointing also; something happens that makes you think "Aha! So this is the message of the story," but even that falls flat.
Rating:
Summary: Original, enlightening look at life in Communist China
Review: This book offers a fresh, rare look at life deep inside Communist China. There are no formulas for the plot: it's original and the self-effacing perspective of the narrator intrigued me. Waiting is a book without ego. At first the narrative style seemed to read like a translation. But I realized that the author's technique was really an extension of the cultural distinctions about which he described in the novel. He made the culture of Mao inside China come alive for me. The characters were roundly drawn and credible, and the story line, while quite simple, offers an exquisite beauty in the irony of its denouement. Jin impressed me with his sincerity, honesty, vivid portrait work and originality. We are fortunate to have such a well-drawn look at such an inaccessible society by someone who understands it so well. His accomplishment in crafting such moving literature in his second language speaks volumes for his intelligence and creative sensibility. I eagerly await his next novel.
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