Rating: 
Summary: Still Waiting
Review: Ha Jin, who taught himself English while working as a railroad telegrapher on the Sino-Soviet frontier, decided not to return to China after Tiananman Square, and, like Conrad and Nabokov before him, willed himself into becoming a writer in English, is a self-made man. His personal story epitomizes the American Dream and underscores a certain political point of view about China. Perhaps for this reason, "Waiting," his first novel, has been overrated and over-awarded.The backdrop of the novel -- the daily life of proletarians and party officials in Mao's China -- is interesting enough and sometimes amusing, but the author's development of his central characters and his narrative technique will disappoint readers used to Western fiction. There is little of the subtlety of Checkov or Turgenev, or the expanse of Nabokov, here. Physician Lin Kong and his chaste lover, nurse Manna Wu, begin and end as tentative, slight characters, virtually devoid of inner lives or major contradictions. The so-called "twist" at the end of this book is, in reality, little more than a double dose of the tentativeness which affects Lin throughout. To the extent Lin and Manna face dilemmas, they do so, not through actions which the reader might interpret and identify with, but rather through interior monologues of the angel-on-the-left-shoulder, devil-on the-right-shoulder variety. As a result, their problems never really become our problems. This is easy, but unfortunately not rewarding, reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Literary Merit
Review: One could sum this book up with the statement: "That for which we are waiting never presents itself after the wait, but while we are waiting." but that alone would not do this book justice. The title itself is an accurate representation of what the book is about and what the book is-- waiting. The action (or inaction, depending upon one's perspective) of waiting is not only central to the plot, but as well to the reader.
Initially, it appears as though Lin, the main character, alone carries the Sisyphian act of waiting, (though from the perspective of a mortal)but as the story gradually presents itself, one soon realizes that every character carries this weight-- possibly more so than Lin. The reader too is drawn into this story by engaging in a different sort of waiting than do the characters, however all strands of waiting are interwoven within the story which causes the reader to be drawn deeper into the action. This technique elevates Ha Jin to the level of Greatness as it pertains to writers.
This book may appear slow at times, but if the reader is mindful and attentive, the fruits of the beautiful poetic verse will blossom and make Waiting, or the act of, a truly enjoyable experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Minimal. Excellent.
Review: Ha Jin, Waiting (Pantheon, 1999) Waiting, the 1999 National Book Award winner, is something special. It is one of the first few books of what will hopefully become a renaissance in American minimalist writing. The story is nothing new; an army doctor, Lin Kong, has been separated from his wife for years. During that time, he's met and fallen in love with a single nurse, Manna Wu. But every year, when he goes home on leave, he tries to divorce his wife and fails, for varying reasons. Will Lin ever get his wish? And if he gets it, will it be what he really wants? I find it hard to imagine the reader who can't find someone in this novel to identify with. Everyone's had relationships before. Most of us have found ourselves entangled in the with-one-person-attracted-to-another net a few times. Ha Jin's soft, unobtrusive narrative style allows us to get to know the characters, giving us a leisurely pace and spicing the drama with gentle humor now and again. The book's only real downfall is in that pace. Being able to read more than one book at a time is a boon where Waiting is concerned; this is a book that demands to be put down every couple of chapters and absorbed, rather than to be read all at one sitting. Switching off between Waiting and something less cerebral may be the way to go with this one, if you're not the most patient of readers. One way or the other, though, Waiting is highly recommended all around. ****
Rating:
Summary: Quiet, effective prose
Review: The title is deceptive. By definition, it insinuates that nothing of significance will happen until whatever is waited for finally occurs, and it further insinuates that this will be the experience of its characters as well as its readers. However, Ha Jin takes on the formidable task of telling a story about what happens _during_ the act of waiting; that time period that one usually brushes off as lost to fidgetiness and anticipation. He shows us that, inevitably, if you're made to wait for someone or something too long, the satisfaction of the payoff ultimately decreases. Something about you changes: your disposition, your insight, your emotions, your desire for what you're waiting for. There is an enormous amount of intimate action that takes place in this story, even as it appears as if nothing of much relevance is happening. Every summer Lin Kong, a doctor in the Chinese army, returns to his village to ask his wife for a divorce. Their marriage was arranged and it is a loveless union. Manna Wu, a nurse in the army and his mistress (the term is used loosely as they have no sexual contact whatsoever, purity being essential for an unmarried woman within their culture) waits for the day the divorce is granted and the two of them can become engaged. Each year, however, his wife promises the divorce but does not see it through, and he and Manna must wait another year before he can go back and try again. For eighteen years, summer after summer, they bide their time and endure this waiting. The emotional changes that occur, subtle as they are, during the course of every year that passes is "what happens" in this story. Jin unfolds their story lovingly, quietly, and deftly, with such rich detail that we understand alot of what is happening between them even as they don't. It's a tender, often harsh, look at two people caught within and crippled by the boundaries of their culture. For a book in which so little happens, "Waiting" is a very compelling read. It won the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Well deserved.
Rating:
Summary: An ending with a twist...
Review: This was a great book, simply written, with clear images. I liked that there weren't an excessive number of characters to define and keep up with. I got to really focus on the people involved in the story, and I liked that. The story was an interesting one, and I can't think of another book more appropriately titled. I am amazed that Manna Wu, Lin Kong's girlfriend, would wait for any man for nearly 20 years, much less a married one. I was really drawn to the character of Lin's wife...I think she is the real hero of the novel. It's a really good book that you can read in a couple of evenings, and it's not overly complicated. I finished the book feeling good, feeling that life isn't always what we expect, even when we get what we think we want.
Rating: 
Summary: Just another week at the book club
Review: 'Waiting', by Ha Jin is an interesting exporation into the nature of love as the novel travels between cultures and across years. Lin Kong, an army doctor, is held between two worlds: He lives and works in an army camp near the city where he waits with his girfriend Manna Wu for the divorce that will allow them to marry. For two weeks of each year, he visits his wife, Shuyu, in provincial Goose village. Each year he attempts to secure a divorce. Each year, he fails. Ha Jin makes subtle use of the flow of political and cultural change in the People's Republic to provide an intricately drawn backdrop to Lin Kong's life at the hospital. Meanwhile, Goose village remains relatively unchanged. It is a timeless place of dirt floors and hard work. It is a place in which Shuyu's bound feet, frugal ways and quiet devotion to an absentee husband make her a peerless wife - and Lin's attempts to divorce her absurd in the eyes of the villagers and local judges. While Ha Jin does a wonderful job of bringing the times and places in 'Waiting' to life, he is less successful with his female characters. Neither woman, Manna Wu or Shuyu, is fully developed. Both are architypes - revealing much in general about the kind of women they represent in large, but lacking the spark of soul that would bring them to life in the mind's eye of the reader. This last is the great failure of 'Waiting'. The author's view of love in its many forms and ways is seen through the filter of an uwaveringly male viewpoint. Ha Jin never succeeds at getting inside the hearts and minds of the women in his story. The wants and needs of Shuyu and Manna are built on little more than duty and tradition on one hand and the fear of ending up alone on the other. This turns what might have been a great book and a memorable story into just another week at the book club.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe I waited too long
Review: This book has been on my list of "mean to read that one" since it was first published. I finally got around to it this week, and maybe I'd set myself up for disappointment by having my hopes so high. I WANTED to love this book, but I just didn't. I kept feeling like I was on the verge of really falling in love with the novel and that, with each page turned, I would be closer to having my breath taken away. Instead, with each page turned, I grew more frustrated to discover that I wasn't getting any closer to the character's hearts. I have a feeling that if the book had been written entirely from the points of views of the two women, I would have enjoyed it more.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, beautiful prose!
Review: The protagonist of Ha Jin's "Waiting", Lin Kong, is a Chinese Army doctor who is trapped in an arranged marriage. His wife, Shuyu, a simple and uneducated woman with "a country way" of being, although the most embarrassing thing of it all, is that she has bound feet. Yet, Lin is happy with his organized military life working for the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Muji City, while his wife and daughter is staying back in Goose Village. But then he falls in love with Manna Wu, one of the nurses working at the hospital. Being in an arranged marriage Lin has always been dreaming of true love and romance. And together with Manna he experiences the sensations of love for the first time. All of a sudden Lin find himself caught between two completely different worlds. A life with his uneducated wife in the rural countryside of Goose Village or with Manna, an educated beautiful woman, in Muji City. He is trapped by a culture in which adultery (if caught) will ruin your both your life and career. The rules are though, you can obtain a divorce automatically only after 18 years, so his only hope is that his wife will agree to a divorce. So, year after year, for his holiday, Lin returns to his village to ask for a divorce, and year after year he returns from his vacation to the city and Manna, still married, still not able of consummate his relationship with her. When Lin, after 17 years, finally is granted a divorce, he finds that things don't turn out the way he thought they would. (You know what they say "Wanting what you can't have - the essence of wanting..) All those years of waiting and waiting... A nice twist to the story is when we in the end realize that it's not Lin's waiting for true love that inspired this book's title, but the waiting his wife Shuyu and daughter endured until Lin returned to them. I simply adored this book. I am not sure what I was expecting, but this book took me by complete surprise! I read it in fifty-page gulps, completely fascinated by the story and its beautiful, beautiful prose. I found myself hypnotized by Ha Jin's spare and economical prose. A style I've come to like through authors such as Coetzee and Hemingway, and at times "Waiting" is a bit Hemingway-esque. Despite the economical prose, the story is rich and characters are beautifully developed. "Waiting" is highly deserving of the "PEN/Faulkner" and "National Book Award" it won. This bittersweet novel will linger on your mind for a long time after you've finished it. It was the first book I read by Ha Jin, but I am already looking forward to his next book. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Kept Waiting
Review: I read 3-4 books per month and I kept waiting for Waiting to speak to me. I thought the novel dull, depressing, not realistic and worst of all did not teach me about revolutionary China other than through the wimpy characters suppression.
Rating:
Summary: Dick Hill, the best reader I've heard
Review: Since I often listen to a book while driving after having read it or while reading the book at home, I've often been disappointed with a reading. Too often, it seems, the reader doesn't match my own imagination; too often, the reader doesn't put himself/herself into the writing; too often he/she reads words, not emotions.
But those negatives are not the case with Dick Hill. His intonations are superb; his phrasing is perfect. His reading does Ha Jin's beautiful work justice. In many ways, Hill's reading is more than that; it's a performance with expressive talent. If you've read the book but have not heard the tape done by Dick Hill, try it. It's a real treat.
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