A review by stitchykitch
Waiting by Ha Jin

3.0

I tend to be a plot focused reader, and after reading some of the complaints of other readers about this novel, I feel like maybe I missed something. I liked the characters a lot, and even though the dialog was sometimes plain, i felt that it was realistic. No one actually speaks like the characters in a Dickens novel, anyway. I can't say for sure whether this book as an accurate description of chinese culture during the cultural revolution, but i can say that the social and personal conflicts seemed real enough to me.

What i really liked about this book is how frustrated it made me. I didn't realize the emotional investment i made in Lin Kong and his 2 families until i finished the book and had a lingering feeling of disappointment, almost like the feeling you get when you fight with someone in a dream and wake up actually angry at that person.

I don't know if it's worth the award it got, but it's definitely worth the read.