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Title: American Woman : A Novel by Susan Choi ISBN: 0-06-054221-7 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 14 August, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (16 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Good, but not great
Comment: I have to agree with the reviewer a while back, who observed that making Shimada a daughter of camp internees who ALSO spent her childhood in Hiroshima and who ALSO later became involved with the S.L.A. is just a little too much. The first fact alone would have been enough. Choi was smart to withhold this information until relatively late in the novel, but even this structural decision can't keep Shimada's psychological trajectory from feeling too tidy.
Otherwise, I think this novel features fine (but not brilliant) psychological insight into the characters, solid plot construction, and most of all, an ambitious exploration of large questions regarding class, race, gender, political and social change, idealism and "American" self-invention. Choi's intelligence is a true pleasure, and this is her greatest strength.
However, the actual writing is a sticking point for me. Sentence by sentence, page by page, chapter by chapter, the novel feels insufficiently compressed, which makes it far too slow. The weak passages water down the strong passages. (If it had been 70-100 pages shorter, the book would be much stronger.) And sorry to say this, but stylistically, I find the writing unmemorable. There are far more gifted stylists in her generation, such as Lahiri, Haslett, Diaz, Ali, etc. But substance is her strength, like I said. I definitely look forward to the next book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Time Warp: An Inside View of the History of Radicalism
Comment: Susan Choi's first novel THE FOREIGN STUDENT signaled the arrival of a sensitive new voice unafraid to tackle tender issues of national guilt and immigrant isolation in the Land of Dreams. In her new novel AMERICAN WOMAN Choi further establishes her credentials as an important American writer who manages to research historical data so well that turning that media blitz-hype into a novel results in a compelling probe of the minds of youth at odds with the society that raised them.
Succinctly based on the 1974 SLA kidnapping of Patricia Hearst and its aftermath, Choi has played out this tragic but intensely credible bit of American history in the form of a series of character studies of those involved. The main character Jenny is a Japanese American girl involved with the radical groups who struck out against the Vietnam War, the hypocrisy of a 'democratic' America, and the abuse of the police in neglecting the poor people of this country. Choi's Jenny makes us re-examine the motivation that perpetrated the radicals of that period and if this book has no other result than to cause us all to re-think the important role of students who questioned the state of the Union, then that raised flag would be sufficient. But this finely wrought novel goes beyond that exploratory surgery and finds analogies to the reactions to the interment of the Japanese during WW II (Jenny's father was one of those interred and greatly influenced her perception of right and wrong in America), to the effect of isolation (read imprisonment/segregation) on young minds at odds with the status quo, to the power of bonding between individuals whose common needs may in fact be disparate.
AMERICAN WOMAN is a slow read: Choi knows how to create that pregnant ennui that encapsulates feral individuals awaiting the backlash of their actions. But during those slow pages Choi manages to spread her canvas on the page and paint immaculate images of nature at rest and at fury. In the end she gives us a group of people not all of whom we can admire (or even care for), but at the same time she molds thoughtful minds that accept abuse because of their beliefs, who continue to foster dreams against all plausible odds. And just when you may tire of the shenanigans of Choi's 'cast', you are reminded that this story on a different level DID happen. Stay with this book to the end and you will embrace or perhaps even question your own idealistic youth that dwells back there someplace in the 1970s.
Rating: 4
Summary: At last, 'generation x' is showing some sense!
Comment: As an older American, I enjoyed this book so very much, because it requires that its readers take seriously some issues that are very pressing: the problem of radical activity on the part of our young people. The book takes place in the nineteen-seventies, but it is as timeless as Greek Tragedy in the way that it demonstrates that spoiled, overindulged children can turn on the hand that has fed them and bite it, voraciously.
Maybe this is the sort of book that appeals to older people. I didn't think this sort of morality was fashionable in the 'generation x' fiction of today and I'm positively delighted to see a book that presents us with characters unashamedly portrayed not only as living, breathing persons but as cautionary archetypes as well. The Patricia Hearst case may seem "funny" to some people, but to those of us who are older it was tragic and heartbreaking to see a beautiful young girl, who stood for so many other beautiful young girls of that troubled time, traveling the wrong path and getting mixed up with the wrong crowd.
In this book, Jenny Shimada may have had better reasons for going astray, and she may have had more second thoughts, but even so, here is a beautiful girl who turns her back on a God-given artistic talent to become a bombthrowing radical. I just shook my head it was such a shame.
And now that we have the shameful sight of hoodlums breaking up trade organization meetings and such in beautiful American cities like Seattle, (not to mention young people turning to terrorism in the middle east and Afghanistan and such places) and young people protesting against our armed forces, I am so glad to see that Susan Choi has turned her own considerable artistic talent toward writing a wonderful book about how impulsive choices and temptation during tempestuous times can lead to very big trouble and heartbreak and trouble with the law too. I hope this book wins every award available. ...
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Title: The Foreign Student : A Novel by Susan Choi ISBN: 0060929278 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Namesake : A Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri ISBN: 0395927218 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0385500696 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy ISBN: 0743244354 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Brick Lane: A Novel by Monica Ali ISBN: 0743243307 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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