A Gesture Life: A Novel
Written by Chang-rae Lee
Narrated by Greg Watanabe
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life is now available for the first time in audio!
His remarkable debut novel was called "rapturous" (The New York Times Book Review), "revelatory" (Vogue), and "wholly innovative" (Kirkus Reviews). It was the recipient of six major awards, including the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN award. Now Chang-rae Lee has written a powerful and beautifully crafted second novel that leaves no doubt about the extraordinary depth and range of his talent.
A Gesture Life is the story of a proper man, an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet as his story unfolds, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II.
In A Gesture Life, Chang-rae Lee leads us with dazzling control through a taut, suspenseful story about love, family, and community—and the secrets we harbor. As in Native Speaker, he writes of the ways outsiders conform in order to survive and the price they pay for doing so. It is a haunting, breathtaking display of talent by an acclaimed young author.
Chang-rae Lee
Chang-rae Lee (1965), nació en Corea del Sur y emigró a los Estados Unidos con su familia cuando tenía tres años. Su primera novela, En lengua materna, publicada en esta colección, fue premiada con el PEN Hemingway Award, el Oregon Book Award y el American Book Award, entre otros galardones, mientras que las revistas The New Yorker y Granta lo destacaron como uno de los más prometedores escritores del nuevo siglo.«Una novela vigorosa y poética que llega hasta la raíz de aquello en lo que indaga... Excelente» (Marcos Giralt Torrente, El País); «Escritura especialmente afilada y perturbadora» (Manuel Ollé, ABC). Con su segunda novela, Una vida de gestos, se consagró como una de las voces más originales y ambiciosas de la literatura norteamericana contemporánea: «La angustia y el esplendor de una prosa que fluye sin desmayo, apretada de significaciones y consoladora como el sueño de opio que trata de espantar el acoso de una pesadilla» (Juan Manuel de Prada, ABC); «Muchos críticos le han comparado a Kazuo Ishiguro. Un nuevo valor seguro en la literatura contemporánea» (Isabel Núñez, La Vanguardia). Desde las alturas es su tercera novela: «La primera novela suya que me engullo, y debo decir que, a partir de ahora, me cuento entre sus seguidores más fieles. Altísima temperatura literaria. La prosa, magnífica. A Lee le han comparado con Updike. Por derecho propio ya forma parte de la pléyade de los más grandes» (Jordi Llavina); «La cristalina prosa de un joven maestro» (Rodrigo Fresán, Página 12).
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Reviews for A Gesture Life
233 ratings14 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I almost love this book, but a few things keep me from it.
First, though, I'll tell you why I love it. I love the way the story unfolds. Chang-rae Lee takes his time revealing the story. It comes out in bits and pieces from the first-person perspective of Doc Hata, just as a person would generally reflect on his own life. A scene comes to mind, then something else jumps in and we follow that thread for a bit, then back to the original scene, which is now colored by the tangent. I luxuriated in the language and found myself hypnotized by the writing. I closed the last page and looked at the clock and did a double-take: it was 2am. I love when a book transports me like that.
One of the little pebbles in my shoe along the journey of this book is a time issue. I had (and still have) a lot of trouble figuring out how old Sunny is at the end of the book. Doc Hata says at one point that he hadn't seen her in nearly 13 years and that now she would be twenty-two. Except that we know he saw her when she was 18. Maybe he meant that he hadn't really seen her since she was 9, before the rift between them began to widen? Maybe he meant she was thirty-two? This would make more sense given that he mentions a few wrinkles and grey hairs, which are more common in the over-thirty set than the twenty-two-year-olds I've known. Maybe this is just an editing snafu, but man does it rankle me.
The other part that keeps me from loving this book is the despair of it. Doc Hata is a man who has lived a number of identities, all shaped by and for the culture around him. He's Korean and works to become Japanese. He's Japanese and works to become an American. He's a medic and becomes a doctor (at least in the eyes of the people in his town). He's a chameleon, which is, I think, why it's so hard for anyone to get close to him. How can they know who it is they're dealing with? How can they put their trust in someone whose identity is so slippery?
Then there's Hata's sense that, because he's around when tragedy strikes those around him, he somehow attracts tragedy (cum hoc, ergo propter hoc). He sees himself as the opposite of a lucky rabbit's foot, and he convinces himself that those around him would be better off without him. He seems to feel as though he's unintentionally deceived them into believing that he's helping them through their misfortunes when they wouldn't have had any misfortunes at all if he'd kept his distance.
While it's illogical, it's not unrealistic that Hata believes this. On the contrary, his world-view and his view of himself are all the more tragic because they're totally realistic, and all the more unsettling because of the personal connection I feel to these beliefs. I can relate to Hata's search for a place and an identity, and I can relate to his attempts to make some order out of the causes and effects in his life. I've not experienced anything to the degree that Hata has, but as a life-long nomad, I've done my share of trying to fit in and trying to discover who I am in relation to the wheres and whos of my current stop, wherever and whenever that might be.
This was a beautifully written gut-punch of a story, but I couldn't love it because it carried the much-too-real aroma of the despair and futility that lurks just beneath the surface. Acknowledging that despair by loving this story seems too dangerous; I prefer to keep my distance from it. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I felt like I hadn't properly understood it, as if i should read it again. Superficially straightforward though. The detached writing style I normally hate about American writing is innate to the subject. Not simple and enjoyable like Native Speaker, and not genre either. Apart from sending everyone to hospital at the end, very beliveable, and understandable: honest. Underrated writer.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Started out somewhat interesting, but lost me immediately. Was never able to regain any interest at all.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a beautifully written book. Though the theme was grey and took a long time to play out I just could not put the book down. The main character, Franklin Hata, a Korean raised by foster Japanese parents never manages during his life to connect with his emotions, undoubtedly because of some combination of cultural factors (the reserve and subjugation encouraged by Japanese culture at that time) and the devastating events that spot his life. He remains apparently detached from significant emotional events, but the book shows in writing about his inner thinking about these events that he is actually deeply affected, but he fails to express this because his response is always moderated by what are probably wrongly conceived notions of others' needs. A beatuful and exquisitly written book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An elegant portrayal of the devastation wreaked by war, even in lives whose surface remains placid.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't read this book if you don't like deep novels. This one makes you go very deep into the characters and it is sometimes disturbing. I thought it was a wonderful story and very well-written.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The language and writing is beautiful.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A slow, introspective book. "Doc" Hata, post-retirement, evaluates his relationship with his adopted daughter and with a now-deceased lover. It is only slowly that his experiences in WWII are revealed, and it is up to us to ponder how they have affected these subsequent relationships.In some sense, it confirms my opinion of Japanese as being very concerned with maintaining right relations with community, of meeting one's duty, of self abnegation before offending others.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Gesture Life is the elegant story of Franklin "Doc" Hata, a Japanese man living in suburban New York. He is a proper man quietly living out his days after retiring from the medical supply business. He has a beautiful house and garden and what appears to be a calm life. Everyone respects him, but no one really knows him. As we delve deeper into his history we learn of many rippling disturbances. We discover an adoptive daughter, mysteriously estranged from Hata, with a child of her own. We learn of a relationship with a widow who he cared for deeply but to whom he couldn't quite commit. We don't even fully understand how close they became or why they drifted apart. Through Hata's memories we revisit World War II and his position as medic in Rangoon. We watch the unfolding and blossoming of a relationship with "K" a comfort woman; a relationship that ends in tragedy, as most wartime relationships do. In the end, it's Hata's relationship with daughter, Sunny, that is the most compelling. Theirs is a deep and complicated bond.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Good senstive story of family and life and buried secrets from a war.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A heartfelt story about a Korean veteran's life in a quiet American suburb. As he reflects on his life and the troubles he had raising his willful adopted daughter, we learn more about his formative years in the military and the suffering and cruelty he witnessed there. It is a beautifully told novel about the depth of human pain and the ability to go on with life even after one has seen horror.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chang-rae Lee is an amazing writer. I can’t remember the last time I read writing this good from a Contemporary writer, his prose are beautiful. The story itself is rather secondary to the writing, and honestly in a lesser writer’s hands I would have stopped reading it. The story line is basically two-fold, Franklin Hata’s experience as a Japanese military field medic during WWII where he falls in love with a Korean Comfort woman, and his life in an upper middle-class NY suburb after the war. The story lines are rather depressing and not particularly compelling. I can see why some people have said in reviews that it is boring, and disjointed, but he does such a wonderful job of getting in the skin of Franklin Hata that he pulls you into the character makes you feel Hata’s own quiet desperation.
Lee explores many themes in this book, identity (racial and social), what makes up a life?-is it one that you set up as a window display, or is it one that you actually live and experience without thought of the consequences, and of course it is about relationships; father-daughter, friendships, and romantic love.
I would recommend this book to people who enjoy reading excellent writing, and it would make a good book club selection to explore and discuss the many themes and Hata’s character. This is a book that will no be everyone’s cup of tea though. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lee delivers a disturbing examination of a Korean-born Japanese man who, when a soldier in the Japanese army, falls in love with a comfort-woman. Brutality of that flashback life contrasts with the sedate propriety of Franklin Hata’s upper middle-class Cheeveresque existence. Everything is proper, everything is maintained in order for Hata to fit in. Except the outside fitting-in Hata is in stark contrast to the closed off internal man who has lost the love his daughter and in a Chekovian manner, cannot declare his love for Mary Burns who swims in his pool every Sunday but has no chance of being included beyond that.The title comes from Sunny, Doc Hata’s adopted daughter, who accuses her father of living an empty life, devoted to the maintenance of standard conventions, filled with empty gestures that do nothing to commit the inner man emotionally to anyone.By the end of the novel, when events force Hata to re-evaluate himself upon Sunny’s unexpected return with her son, Hata takes bold steps that leave some hope for his emotional redemption, but not much.Lee’s tone in this novel is restrained, quiet, and emotionally dry, reflecting his narrator’s personality. The details are small and telling as the details of decoration in a classic Japanese home. Lee creates a novel whose action sprawls across two continents and decades of time, but seems to take place in no greater space than a single room in a matter of days, which is practically the case of the “real” setting and time. Claustrophobic atmosphere, artistic prose, deeply flawed hero, explosive secrets combine to equal an excellent read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet, beautiful book that sneaks up on you. Beautiful language, very deft creation of a sense of place.