Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.93 You Save: $11.07 (69%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.04 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Native Speaker
Book Review: Jumping paragraphs half way through...
Summary: 1 Stars
I was very excited to read this book after learning that it could be the chosen one thousands of New Yorkers would read ....this coming spring....The first chapters are very interesting, Lee dissects everything in sight, from relationships, through the character's jobs, failures and dreams. Half way through the book I was still excited and enjoyed the crescendo and wondered where was I headed? Somewhere interesting and fulfilling I hoped. That's when the disappointment started to sink in. Mr. Lee opened the Pandora box of his talent when writing this book and like Indiana Jones found himself in a very dangerous situation where only the likes of Harrison Ford can escape alive.
Page after page, while meandering from one plot to the other I felt dizzy and couldn't see the end of the book in sight. I was not is search of a punchline and loud cymbals to clap at the end - I am snob enough to think that I can grasp the multivariate messages of most writers- . I was in search of a coherent dismount that would honor the first half of Lee's routine. Alas, I didn't see this, what I saw was more of a crash-landing. Good effort but better luck next time.
Maybe I missed something, but last night I caught myself reading just keywords and jumping entire paragraphs to the end in search for the key dialogues and interesting descriptions. Wishing that I had the patience and presence of mind to follow the unbearable rhythm of this tired and repetitive ode to pseudo-stoic double faced characters. Finally around midnight I finished this book. Thank God, do yourself a favor, don't read it. There are so many good books out there and BTW for New Yorkers? That's why Tom Wolfe wrote The Bonfire of Vanities.
Book Review: Just don't read it if you don't feel like it.
Summary: 4 Stars
I am amazed by the reviewers screaming "Just another immigrant book! Just another Asian-American angst thing! Yadda yadda yadda! I hate it so much!" I mean, Jesus Christ, read the BOOK COVER or something before you pick it up, right? There's even a BIG picture of an Asian man and an Asian boy on the front cover--that tip you off? Just says something about the intelligence of these people. I mean, is someone forcing you to read it? Not only is it profoundly racist and elitist--"Oh, look how white I am! I can't relate to YOUR people's problems and all! And in spite of my ancestors being immigrants too, I find the whole subject of immigration unappetizing and perhaps even offensive! Give me something REALLY AMERICAN and REALLY WHITE!"--it's just plain dumb. In an increasingly diverse world, in a time when American can mean so many things--African-American, WASP, Asian-American, Latin-American, Native American, mixed--some people just want to shield their eyes, keep out the "strange" people who are "taking over their jobs" and not have anything to do with them. Well, wake up; America already is diverse and will become so at an increasingly fast pace. We all better learn to live with each other 'cause none of us are going anywhere.
Now, about the book. I loved some parts of it, some parts of it were way too depressing because they were all too accurate, some very few parts could have been better. Overall impression? This is a beatifully written book that has something real, something authentic, something profound to say. This is a book that's going to last, unless fearful, ignorant people dump it into the trashcan out of xenophobia.
Lee's voice is strong, passionate and a bit disenchanted. He's seen a lot of ugly things and he isn't afraid to speak out. But it's not all preaching and oh-thou-art-bad kind of a thing; he's enough of a good writer to make everything interesting, with his careful pacing, tightly structured scenes, and stunning imagery. If you can't take boring, pontificating books, don't worry; Lee provides plenty of action--after all, the main character is something of a spy.
One scene that was especially striking, painful, but ultimately so eloquently beautiful that I actually cried--I never cry while reading--was the scene near the end where Park tries to shield his sort-of-father-figure-turned-bad, being pummeled but still trying to hold his ground. The absolute sadness and the poignancy of that one scene still makes my tears well up. Just the way Lee built up to that scene, and the denouement that came... made my three hours worth it. It was true poetry written in prose.
Lee is a master word-smith. Sometimes all that "eloquence and poetry" business can get in the way of a book... A certain book comes to mind, Lauren Slater's "Prozac Diaries"; that book and its like suffer from the author's love with her own voice, her own cleverness, her big vocabulary and her own artistry. In Lee's case, though, his literary devices and masterful writing skills actually aid the execution of the book.
I loved the book. I didn't enjoy it so much as love it, because some of the sections were just too painful, and those I skimmed and skipped; but not painful in the overtly wrought, cheap, manipulative way that characterizes so much bad maudlin literature, but painful because they contain so much truth, and sometimes the truth hurts more than anything else.
And as for the argument "It doesn't reflect the Korean-American experience..." Hey, I know Lee's grasp of the Korean language is not very good, I've noticed quite a few spelling errors myself, some of them even made me howl with laughter--why didn't the publisher get anyone to check, for God's sake, they're so obvious?--but he does have a great ear for cultural innuendos and the ambience of the characters' world. I'd say that while his observations were not always very accurate or fair--sometimes his views on things did seem a little skewered or biased--they were mostly very right. And, by the by, not all Korean-Americans' experiences are exactly the same, so don't whine about the little details--he got the main overhanging arch of our stories right, and isn't that enough?
Don't like this type of book? Don't waste your time by reading it, don't waste other readers' time by writing a review. But if you aren't biased--you DON'T have to like the genre--there's a fair chance you'll enjoy it. Try it if you dare.
Book Review: Literary Review of Native Speaker
Summary: 4 Stars
This novel depicts the problems involving alienation, isolation, and self-identity crisis that the immigrants face as the minority and outsiders in the American society. This novel takes the structure of detective fiction, developing a story of a spy who investigates an ambitious politician. Its main action concerns an amazingly charismatic New York City councilman, John Kwang, the idol of thousands of immigrant voters in his home district of Queens. Someone wants to see him go down, and it is Henry's job to provide the dirty laundry. Also this story of trust and betrayal is connected together with other, more delicate threads: his troubled relationship with his traditional Korean father, his troubled marriage to his American wife? His Confucian inability to express live to either of them except through silence. Beautifully written and intriguingly plotted, the novel interweaves politics, love, family, and loss as Park starts to make sense of the rhythm of his life. As he does, his experiences illuminate the many-layered immigrant experience in general, and the Asian immigrant experience in particular, in a way that many readers will understand and appreciate. Through the life of Henry Park, the author exposes the alienation and isolation that many immigrants and their children faces from the American society. Also he depicts the conflicts between 1st generation immigrants and 2nd generation America-born children caused from the cultural differences and the incompatible perspectives toward their lives. Through the motif of a spy, the author successfully creates feeling of uncertainty of identity and place from a point view of a perpetual outcast looking at American culture from a distance. Beginning to fear That he has betrayed both Korean and American worlds and belong to neither, the only thing that Henry Park acquired from his life as a spy and an outsider is the confirmation of his true identity filled with pain and sorrow. There are many qualities of this novel that resembles the qualities of Romanticism of Great Gatzby as Henry Park, the hero of the novel, quests for truth of his identity and displays a strong disbelief toward civilization and love toward the nature. Also Henry Park has some characteristics of the hero of Hemingway such as NADA, inability to sleep during night, and the belief of grace under pressure. Who am I? This question is thrown to the author, Chang-rae Lee himself as well as to Henry Park. Even though he immigrated to United States when he was only three, graduated from the Yale University, and established himself as Native Speaker who uses the English as his native language, he still feels that he is an outsider who can not assimilate into American society. For this sense, we could view this novel as author's honest experience of his life. The novel Native Speaker approaches the readers as an important meaning for it deals with racial problem, a peculiar aspect of American society, and boldly exposes the alienation of modern people.Book Review: Lyrical
Summary: 4 Stars
Perhaps the highest compliment I could give this book is one that I already have in the title line: this book is lyrical. And like a good lyric it acts upon your imagination to produce visuals and emotions that last with you long after you have finished the book.I am a father and Lee touches on my deepest fears in this book and makes me emphatize with him, even though I am not Korean-American. And that is the beauty of the book, that because of its specificity, it becomes universal.
I do not know if the Korean-American experience is truthfully recorded here, however I do believe that truth is present in the words. The truth of father, a husband, an employee, a minority, a human ... if you are interested in a beautifully-structured and well-written book on life, loss and love .. this is the book to read.
Book Review: Lyrical, but too autobiographical
Summary: 3 Stars
A work of fiction should transport the reader beyond the world we perceive around us. When a writer of fiction fails to do this, he is merely recording his initial impressions which may be true but antithetical to fiction. Those initial impressions must be wrought into something almost unrecognizable, otherworldly if you like, and made to serve the structure of the novel. I must confess that there were aspects of Chang Rae-Lee's novel that I found deeply moving because of their familiarity (I'm Korean American), but speaking as a student of the novel form, I found the book to be a lyrical autobiography with a smattering of artifice (the stuff of fiction) to give it a flavor but not the taste of genuine fiction.