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Waiting: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Ha Jin
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  303 reviews
Sales Rank: 24321
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0375706410
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375706417
ASIN: 0375706410
Publication Date: September 19, 2000
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Amazon.com Review
"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." Like a fairy tale, Ha Jin's masterful novel of love and politics begins with a formula--and like a fairy tale, Waiting uses its slight, deceptively simple framework to encompass a wide range of truths about the human heart. Lin Kong is a Chinese army doctor trapped in an arranged marriage that embarrasses and repels him. (Shuyu has country ways, a withered face, and most humiliating of all, bound feet.) Nevertheless, he's content with his tidy military life, at least until he falls in love with Manna, a nurse at his hospital. Regulations forbid an army officer to divorce without his wife's consent--until 18 years have passed, that is, after which he is free to marry again. So, year after year Lin asks his wife for his freedom, and year after year he returns from the provincial courthouse: still married, still unable to consummate his relationship with Manna. Nothing feeds love like obstacles placed in its way--right? But Jin's novel answers the question of what might have happened to Romeo and Juliet had their romance been stretched out for several decades. In the initial confusion of his chaste love affair, Lin longs for the peace and quiet of his "old rut." Then killing time becomes its own kind of rut, and in the end, he is forced to conclude that he "waited eighteen years just for the sake of waiting." There's a political allegory here, of course, but it grows naturally from these characters' hearts. Neither Lin nor Manna is especially ideological, and the tumultuous events occurring around them go mostly unnoticed. They meet during a forced military march, and have their first tender moment during an opera about a naval battle. (While the audience shouts, "Down with Japanese Imperialism!" the couple holds hands and gazes dreamily into each other's eyes.) When Lin is in Goose Village one summer, a mutual acquaintance rapes Manna; years later, the rapist appears on a TV report titled "To Get Rich Is Glorious," after having made thousands in construction. Jin resists hammering ideological ironies like these home, but totalitarianism's effects on Lin are clear: Let me tell you what really happened, the voice said. All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others' opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. You were misled by your own frustration and passivity, believing that what you were not allowed to have was what your heart was destined to embrace. Ha Jin himself served in the People's Liberation Army, and in fact left his native country for the U.S. only in 1985. That a non-native speaker can produce English of such translucence and power is truly remarkable--but really, his prose is the least of the miracles here. Improbably, Jin makes an unconsummated 18-year love affair loom as urgent as political terror or war, while history-changing events gain the immediacy of a domestic dilemma. Gracefully phrased, impeccably paced, Waiting is the kind of realist novel you thought was no longer being written. --Mary Park
Product Description
"In Waiting, Ha Jin portrays the life of Lin Kong, a dedicated doctor torn by his love for two women: one who belongs to the New China of the Cultural Revolution, the other to the ancient traditions of his family's village. Ha Jin profoundly understands the conflict between the individual and society, between the timeless universality of the human heart and constantly shifting politics of the moment. With wisdom, restraint, and empathy for all his characters, he vividly reveals the complexities and subtleties of a world and a people we desperately need to know."--Judges' Citation, National Book Award
"Ha Jin's novel could hardly be less theatrical, yet we're immediately engaged by its narrative structure, by its wry humor and by the subtle, startling shifts it produces in our understanding of characters and their situation."--The New York Times Book Review
"Subtle and complex--his best work to date. A moving meditation on the effects of time upon love."--The Washington Post
"A high achievement indeed."--Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books
"A portrait of Chinese provincial life that terrifies with its emptiness even more than with its all-pervasive vulgarity. The poet in [Jin] intersperses these human scenes with achingly beautiful vignettes of natural beauty."--Los Angeles Times
"A simple love story that transcends cultural barriers--. From the idyllic countryside to the small towns in northeast China, Jin's depictions are filled with an earthy poetic grace--. Jin's account of daily life in China is convincing and rich in detail."--The Chicago Tribune
"Compassionate, earthy, robust, and wise, Waiting blends provocative allegory with all-too-human comedy. The result touches and reveals, bringing to life a singular world in its spectacular intricacy."--Gish Jen, author of Who's Irish?
"A remarkable love story. Ha Jin's understanding of the human heart and the human condition transcends borders and time. Waiting is an outstanding literary achievement."--Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain
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| Customer Reviews: Read 298 more reviews...
 Brilliantly elegant November 9, 1999
78 out of 78 found this review helpful
Reading this book one is reminded of the old Hemingway saw about how fiction should only give away the tip of the iceberg. The graceful, simple prose of this book reveals just the smallest portion of the complex emotional and politcal currents that run beneath this story. This is the kind of book that, once you have finished, you cannot get out of your head. The book jacket calls Ha Jin a "sturdy realist," but that's not really right; his prose has much more in common with a modernist minimalism. A must read for anyone who thinks that fiction writing in America is moribund.
 Waiting for the Point January 13, 2000
75 out of 93 found this review helpful
To me Waiting was a poor man's Remains of the Day, a story of life deferred because of the main character's willingness to conform to convention (in this case, the government of Communist China). For many years a man who has no sense of committment to anything but his advancement in a stultifying bureacratic world refuses to act on his love for a young woman. Life passes them both by. The communist mentality influences every aspect of their lives. The story is tediously slow, going over the same ground over & over. I subsequently read a book about the effects of the communtist mentality which moved me greatly and deepened my understanding of a people wounded psychologically, economically, and politically by the forces of communism--that was Memory of the Forest which is a beautifully written novel with beautiful character development and a gripping narrative. In Waiting you just wait for the characters to gain insight or to do something that is interesting, and it just doesn't happen. How did this book end up as a National Book Award finalist? Please explain.
Delicate and fascinating June 15, 2000
64 out of 66 found this review helpful
I believe I can understand the negative comments this book has received, but I do not agree with them. Having several Asian friends, I was fascinated by the glimpse into Chinese culture--not only the political landscape, but family relations. I think people may be expecting something more grandiose from this book since it is an award winner. Rather, this book is like its main character, subtle. The narrative is straight forward, and the story is literally about "waiting," waiting for a period in your life to begin. I think what this book gives us, besides a wonderful peek into Chinese society, is a lesson to find what we love in life and revel in it. This is not a book to "polish off quickly." Rather it is one to read and think about each word, and the way those words are presented. I loved it. I finished the book several weeks ago, and I still think of Lin, and wonder if he will ever really know happiness.
A wonderful book, honest and touching November 20, 1999
58 out of 65 found this review helpful
Ha Jin has done it again! "Waiting" is absolutely wonderful. Ha Jin has a way of bring a character to life, and give even the most minor player in the story flesh and blood. The honesty in his work really touched me. Buy the book, you won't be disappointed.
 Fascintating November 1, 1999
57 out of 60 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed this book - as much for what it reveals of China as for the plot. The three people at the center of this novel --husband, wife and the 'girlfriend' (not mistress, that step is too dangerous for them to risk) who waits 18 years for him to get a divorce-- are in a state of limbo for much of their adult lives, constricted as they are by the laws of their society and by the limitations of their experience. This is a fast, easy book to read, but I don't mean this to sound negative, much is going on beneath the surface of an apparently straightforward story, and it left me contemplating how much we all take for granted about the laws of our society, how rarely we question the conventions we're brought up with. Well worth reading.
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