Waiting: A Novel
by Ha Jin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ha JinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-09-19
ISBN: 0375706410
Number of pages: 308
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Waiting: A Novel
Book Review: "How many years do you have in your life?"
Summary: 4 Stars
One of the few extravagant touches in this plain-spoken, calmly narrated novel is its attention-grabbing opening line (''Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.''). For nearly two decades, Lin has been trying to get his long-suffering wife to agree to a divorce so he can marry his coworker, Manna Wu, but Shuyu always changes her mind at the last minute, for one reason or another (usually under pressure from her meddlesome brother). Eighteen years of separation are required by law before Lin can be granted a divorce without his wife's consent, and the novel opens just prior to the end of this long delay.
"Come on, next year I'll divorce her, whether she agrees or not. Let's just wait another year, all right?"
"Another year?" Her voice turned rather shrill. "How many years do you have in your life?"
This humorous beginning launches Ha Jin's reflective meditation on the nature of love and the lengths (chronological and emotional) that lovers go through to fulfill it. Many things other than the patience required by a wait of eighteen long years complicate the couple's journey: Lin's feelings toward his first wife, while not passionate, are hardly opprobrious; he is nearly a stranger to his only daughter; Manna Wu, a single and otherwise available woman, must suffer the reputation of a spinster and the aggressive advances of powerful men; and, most fascinatingly, every character in some way endures the clash between, on the one hand, "Western" ideas of literature and of divorce and, on the other, Communist ideology and Chinese traditions.
Stylistically, "Waiting" is, as its very name implies, a quiet novel, but its simplicity is deceptive: the events and the characters it describes are fully animated. The prose itself is what the word "lyrical" was invented to describe. True--the resolution of the characters myriad affairs is somewhat expected, but the details of this comedy are a pleasure.
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