'Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.' For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young - a humble and touchingly loyal woman - whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where ...
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'Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.' For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young - a humble and touchingly loyal woman - whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different. Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of wisdom. Waiting charms and startles with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.
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Add this copy of Waiting: a Novel to cart. $0.99, good condition, Sold by BookHolders rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Gambrills, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2000 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
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Ha Jin's acclaimed novel "Waiting" is set in China during the Cultural Revolution of the late twentieth century. The three main characters are Lin Kong, a doctor in the Chinese Army, Shuyu, his wife through an arranged marriage and the product of a traditionalist upbringing (i.e. with bound feet) and Mannu Wu an educated, modern nurse that Lin plans to marry. Under military law, Lin must wait 18 years before he may secure a divorce without the consent of his wife.
The story operates on multiple levels. It is in part a story which explores the nature of love -- what does it mean to love someone and how does one know when he or she is in love? The story also works as a political allegory of the Communist regime in China. Closely related to the latter, it is a fable about a traditional way of life coming into contact with modernity and industrialization (communist or not).
On all levels, the story shows the ambiguity of the human heart and the difficulty of self-knowledge. These are basic difficulties in being human, and the understanding of these difficulties is basic to human love, politics and change. The story shows both how hard it is for people to know their own hearts and also how difficult it is to pursue any ends without bringing, in some way, harm to another person.
The story is told in an eloquent, minimalist prose. The writing is simple and beautiful. I found the primary characters and a host of secondary characters well, if suggestively and sparely, presented and developed.
This book reminded me of another highly acclaimed book: Disgrace by J,M. Coetzee. Both books are written in a restrained prose. Both are about repressive political societies (South Africa and China) in an uncertain state of transition. And both present situations fraught with moral ambiguity which seem to point beyond themselves for understanding.
"Waiting" is a thoughtful and sad story about what a party leader accurately describes at an important moment of the book as "a bitter love".
Robin Friedman
Rubycanary
Nov 29, 2007
Waiting
Having lived in Asia, I found this to be a beautiful and sad tale about the values of love and marriage.
It was very realistic and tragic. Lin Kong waits two decades to marry the woman he really loves. The time it takes to get a divorce without the wife's permission. His humble wife lives at home, dedicated to him, while she knows that he is planning for when their marriage will end.
When he finally does get to marry the love of his life, he finds that the expectations are nothing like the reality.
