Waiting

This book is a real dichotomy.

On the one hand, it is a literary masterpiece, a political allegory, and a love story that won the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction, the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize.

On the other hand, the title is quite apt. The reader will be kept waitingand waitingand waiting for something to happen. It doesn’t. This is a relatively short book that feels quite long.

At its core, this is a love story. But it’s so much more than that. Written by Ha Jin, this is the story of Lin Kong, a man who watches as his life passes him by. Forced into a loveless arranged marriage at an early age, Lin becomes a doctor and works in the big city of Muji, while his wife, Shuyu, and their daughter, Hua, live in rural Goose Village. Every summer he visits them. Every summer he asks Shuyu for a divorce, even making it as far as appearing before a judge. But every summer his request is denied. The impetus for the divorce is simple: At the army hospital, Lin has a girlfriend named Manna Wu. Because adultery is absolutely forbidden by Communist Party, Lin and Manna have a platonic relationship. What happens when Lin is finally granted the divorce after 18 years is at the crux of the novel’s ultimate premise.

Lin’s life is defined by waiting for everything he can’t seem to achieve, and he blames it all on everyone but himselfthe Chinese government, the army’s regulations, his gossiping coworkers, and society’s unwritten, but stringent, ruleswhen it’s actually his own inability to take the risks needed to fully live and love.

The story takes place over several decades from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s during the height of the Chinese cultural revolution. The novel deftly contrasts life in a remote, rural village with life in the city, and also portrays the strict control that the Chinese government had over its citizens’ lives and freedoms.

This is a deeply tragic, disturbing, and sorrowful story of a flawed man who waits his entire life fornothing. And there is an important life lesson in that. Still, this is not an easy read so be prepared for that.

A long time coming

A hard story to read, how interesting can it be to read about a character that is put off by official sanctions and an ineffectual nature from marring his beloved for 18 years?

Best to remind ones self that Waiting won both the National Book Award in 1999 and the 2000 PEN/ Faulkner Award.

Ha Jin takes us to China during the troublesome years of the Mao era and into the early Deng Xiaoping period to see the stressful existence of an Army doctor contorted by his environment constraints and his own inadequacies, and yet by stories end, leaves the reader with enough to linger long over the working of the human condition. Being a Good Man is sometimes not enough.

Awards well earned by an author who found his own reasons not to return to China following the events of June 1989.

The story was written while a professor of English at Emory University; he formally taught Literature at Boston University.

This was the first book of Ha Jin’s that I have read and it won’t be the last. One really feels transported to northeastern, “revolutionary” China – specifically to the ways of a small village and a medium-sized town, and the distinctive atmosphere and social types of those places, especially in the 1960s but even up to the 1980s. Along with telling a highly engaging story, he has a gift for describing nature, from insects and birds to trees and the weather. And the story, while making some social commentary such as portrayal of Geng Yeng who would seem to represent the type of unprincipled, egotistic, and ruthless person who could run a factory in modern China, is really more about love. Love, spoken and unspoken, lustful or duty-bound, hidden or open, for appearance-sake or genuine, within the family and outside the family, for an individual’s desire or socially useful. When things are at their most complicated, Lin Kong, the main character, reflects how what he really wants is just a peaceful domestic life. All the while, what makes the book most interesting is the ever-present background of communist China and its social mores and rules. For example, one must have approval to leave the countryside to live in the city, approval of your bosses to divorce etc. The book is a work of art in every way and highly recommended!

Lin Kong is a doctor in a Chinese military hospital. Despite being separated from his wife for 18 years, he has, up until now, been unable to obtain a divorce. He wishes to marry his girlfriend, Manna Wu, and now, finally, he is about to get his wish. The story that follows is an impressive look at marriage, relationships and our fantasies about love.

One can appreciate how author Ha Jin was deftly able to present sympathetic characters here. Despite his committing a despicable act in divorcing a good wife, we can still feel badly about Lin Kong’s plight. Ultimately the novel is about desire and waiting for its fulfillment. Lin Kong desires a woman who thrills him mentally and sexually. Manna Wu desires a husband who can provide her with a family. Shuyu desires to achieve family unity (and honor) by being an obedient wife. Even China desires to shed itself of its past and move forward into the 20th century. They all wait, but eventually the change they have been waiting for happens. But does reality match up with fantasy?

Speedy delivery. Have already read this book, but the cat had a little accident on it so I had to buy a new copy. Brilliant book

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