Amazon.com Review
"That I am a nobody doesn't bother me as it might some people. I prefer anonymity, unobstructed movement through a crowd with neither a first nor a second glance in my direction." Anonymity is both existential goal and survival skill for Allen Choice, who may call himself a Korean-American but who isn't particularly comfortable with the label. A Silicon Valley security specialist (
don't call him a bodyguard), Choice drifts through life the way he drifts through crowds: detached, isolated, neither particularly fulfilled nor particularly unhappy. He notes wryly, "I used to think I was in inertial rest, a body at rest remaining so. Once an outside force applied itself to me, I would be in motion. I liked this idea. It freed me, relieving me of the responsibility. I just had to wait for an outside force. But I soon realized this was an illusion... I decided to call it the
inertial deception. I can't succumb to it."
But in Over the Shoulder, Leonard Chang's brooding neo-noir novel, circumstances conspire to administer an outside force of momentous proportions when Paul Baumgartner, Choice's partner, is killed in front of him. Paul's family, his employers, and the police all assume the hit was directed at the executive the pair were protecting. But Linda Maldonado, a reporter looking for a hot story to catapult her from the thigh cream comparisons and doggy-daycare features of the Lifestyles pages, hectors Choice into investigating Paul's death.
His investigation is quickly fractured by treachery and deception, as he uncovers strange links between Paul's death and that of his own father, an immigrant who died in a warehouse accident when Choice was 8. Elegantly captured in Chang's restrained prose, secrets and memories rise slowly to the surface, forcing Choice to confront both the long-hidden scars of familial bitterness and the poignancy of his father's quest to preserve his dreams of a medical career, even as he succumbed to the exhausting drudgery of physical labor.
Chang's first two novels, The Fruit 'N Food and Dispatches from the Cold, garnered praise for their starkly realistic portrayal of racial tension and quotidian ennui. Over the Shoulder, though leavened with a touch of dry humor, doesn't pull any punches either, as Chang lays bare his protagonist's frailties and fantasies. --Kelly Flynn
From Publishers Weekly
Despite the bang with which it starts, this is no action thriller rocketing along; instead it's a tortuous journey of discovery by its Korean-American protagonist and narrator, Allen Choice. Separated from his family by death and alienation, Choice is a loner and somewhat of a cipherAa 30-ish bachelor, a college dropout, a bodyguard for a private protection service. Everything changes when his partner, Paul Baumgartner, is shot dead while they're on a routine job babysitting a Silicon Valley executive. Choice's introspective, ruminative natureAhis "dis-ease" as he describes itAis shaken by this murder and by the Kafkaesque events that follow. Nudged by an aggressive reporter, Linda Maldonado, Choice begins to consider various possibilitiesAthat Paul, not their client, was the targetAor even that he himself was the intended victim. Choice finds his investigation anticipated or derailed at every turn, sometimes violently, sometimes more subtly, but inevitably forcing him to learn more about his heritage and his past, including the death of his father when he was only 10. Chang's intricately constructed plot moves easily from the minutiae of protecting a client to the cultural rootlessness affecting his hero. Choice's dual journeyAof self-discovery and the uncovering of his partner's killerAmakes for an absorbing blend of literary novel and crime thriller. (Feb.) Forecast: Chang's first two novels drew critical acclaim upon their publication by Black Heron; the second, Dispatches from the Cold, has been optioned for film. With the greater marketing muscle of HarperCollins behind himAincluding a four-city author tourAChang could break out with this title, especially if the option translates into a feature film.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
