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Waiting
by: Ha Jin

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 9 to 11 days Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780099452256
ISBN: 0099452251
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: December 07, 2006
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 2789698

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk 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 18 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 are 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 gaze 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 US 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

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Still left waiting
This book is 'okay' and for me not much more. It is a very simple read, which is a plus as I felt the plot was lacking. I agree with a reviewer further down the page who said there was nothing to feel for the characters and I was left cold. The story itself started out really well. I remember saying after I'd read the prologue that it was good. However I'd forgotten they had to wait for 18 years and boy did it feel like 18 years.

Lin is completely spineless! Fair enough that he couldn't divorce his wife but he was totally unprepared to at least try out a relationship. I suppose that shows good values but would you wait 18 years for anyone when you could have a relationship with other people. She clearly wanted a family and ... Read More:

Rating:

- Worth the Wait
Like Miso soup, subtle but fulfilling. Ha Jin keeps you waiting, playingon your patience for what you hope will be a closure at the end of thenovel. Of course that never comes. It such a poignant story, where hopeand happiness lie always at the outskirts and the complexities of patienceand longing lay at its heart. His deceptively simple narrative stylecarried me along like a leaf in a slow and gentle stream, but before I knew it I was caught up in the tublent waters of the final chapters.

Rating:

- Questions the very essence of who we are and what we become.
In this highly structured novel of life within the Chinese People's Liberation Army and in the very rural countryside, Ha Jin offers the reader a way to understand the culture and character of people living under repressive conditions. To Lin Kong, his wife Shuyu, and his chaste lover Manna Wu, life is a process of acceptance, not choice, a life in which there are no personal goals, other than working for the greater good of the country and its leaders. Because the concept of freedom simply does not exist here, it never enters anyone's mind. No one feels its loss or yearns for it, and an individual seeks neither happiness nor pleasure, instead finding satisfaction within the system.

Lin Kong, a physician working eleven months of the ... Read More:

Rating:

- It left me standing on the side
I was unmoved by this book. Contrary to what I expected, this book does not reveal the emotions of the people involved, and leave you watching the story unfold without being able to relate to any of the characters or understand why they do what they do. I am still not even convinced that Lin Kong loved Manna!

Rating:

- Tear-inducing tale exploring deep human emotions
I found this book very difficult to put down. From the first page, we are coaxed into understanding the characters and realising why they have no choice but to wait helplessly for each other as they do. The society that is presented in the book is worlds away form the one that we know and yet we grow so familiar with it, we are aware of it's constraints and of the effects they have on the characters. Ha Jin displays a very true and heartfelt understanding of the way the human heart (and mind) works. It is a story that stays with you long after you finish reading it.

Books : Waiting