Customer Reviews

A Person of Interest: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dr. Lee works at a second rate university's mathematics department in which its professors know that they are second rate and that they will never attain recognition for their work as professors, especially younger, more brilliant professors at universities with bigger names. However, their department does have one shining star, Dr. Hendley, a young professor in the department's nascent computer science section. Loquacious, beloved by his students who gather around his office in droves, in a solid relationship with an attractive lady professor, and at the top of his field, the sky is the limit for Hendley. It is for these reasons and more that Lee dislikes Hendley, and it is for this reason that Lee does not feel sorrow when Hendley is seriously wounded by a mail bomb explosion in the office next to his own, but almost a sense of joy, because deep in Lee's being is a deep-rooted jealousy for those who possess things that he does not.

In his sixties, twice divorced, his second wife, a Japanese woman, took most of his possessions, and nearly estranged from his daughter, Dr. Lee, on the outside, is a misanthropic, miserly old man who most people avoid coming in contact with. However, underneath this exterior is a lonely man who keeps his door slightly ajar hoping that a student will visit him during his office hours, hoping that his daughter will visit him, and living in the memory of his time spent with his first wife who is not deceased. It is this loneliness that makes Dr. Lee jump at the opportunity to talk to the press, and state how horrible the perpetrator who sent the bomb is. He soaks in the glory of it all, but soon retreats back into his shell because he begins to feel guilty about the "joy" he felt when Hendley was harmed by the bomb, so he does not attend a school gathering the next day and also he does not attend Hendley's funeral after the noted professor passes away. Along with the guilt, Lee is also heavily weighed upon by a letter he receives, a letter from one Lewis Gaither, a man who attended graduate school at the same time Dr. Lee did and at one time had been his only friend that is until Gaither's wife Aileen left him to be with Lee. Terrified by how the bomb and letter parallel each other, Lee comes to believe that maybe he was the true target of the bomb and that an old grudge thirty years buried has come back. Yet, Lee has bigger problems. Because of his recalcitrance to see Hendley at the hospital and later attend his funeral, government investigators come to his home and soon he becomes "a person of interest", someone who might know about the bombing if not being the perpetrator himself. Soon, not trusted by his neighbors and peers, Lee comes to desire his old solitary life. Also, there is always the looming specter of Gaither, will he strike again?

I have rarely read a novel that spends as much time depicting the mental make up of a character. The reader soon learns a good portion of Lee's likes and dislikes and why he has such difficulty forming relationships with others. The readers also learns of events such as Lee's affair with Aileen while she was still married to Gaither and his personal betrayal of Gaither that eventually turns him into such a bitter man. However, because Choi is detailing such a bitter and frankly unlikable character, the book tends to become a bit tedious at times because the reader does not really care why Lee is bitter because he is such a jerk to everyone else. This aspect of the novel improves as Lee's personality softens towards the middle of the book, but the beginning is tough to bare. With this aspect in mind, the narratives of other characters such as Aileen during flashbacks and another character named Mark, whom, in my opinion, is the most likable character in the novel, are actually more enjoyable and easier to read than those dealing with Lee.

Aspects of Lee's personality aside, Choi's does a fine job of showing how society and the collective perceptions of society control an individual. When Meursault was on trial in Albert Camus's L'Étranger he was almost already found guilty by the court because he did not show emotion at the funeral of his mother. Because Lee did not put on a show of mourning like others, something he believed to be undignified for himself, as well as the memory of Hendley, he becomes a suspect because his coldness and is ostracized from the community in which he lived for thirty or more years.

While no means a great novel and in a number of ways not an enjoyable one, Choi has crafted a fine book detailing the life of a bitter, isolated man whose life is destroyed because he does not act like society believes he should.

For the day and a half or so that I spent reading this book last weekend, very little got done in my home. When I finally finished it on Sunday evening, all the subtle indicators of a misspent weekend were evident - dirty dishes in the sink, heaps of dirty laundry, piles of assorted tax-related documents still needing to be corraled into some semblance of order, and two less than gruntled kitties, whose reproaches were getting progressively more vocal. Having written that, I realise that saying a book is more interesting than household chores might be considered damning it with faint praise, so let me clarify - that's not what I mean - this book is engrossing, and you may find it an irresistible time-sink.

It's been widely, and generally favorably, reviewed. I think the praise is well-deserved. Susan Choi writes beautifully, and was remarkably effective in making me care about Professor Lee, the central character, despite his many flaws and almost total lack of empathy. The basic plot outline - Lee comes under suspicion in the investigation of the death of a colleague who died following a Unabomber-style attack - is sketched in most reviews of the book, so I won't dwell on it here. The plot is not really the book's strong point - it is a little haphazard, with some aspects that don't seem completely plausible. But that hardly matters, it really just serves to provide the framework for Choi's in-depth, fascinating, and completely convincing character study of her flawed protagonist.

In the novel, Lee is a math professor; I spent four years of graduate school studying mathematical statistics. At certain points in the book I would find myself thinking - "she's exaggerating - nobody could be that lacking in empathy". But then, I'd do a mental rundown of my own class roster, and come up with at least two or three characters who were even weirder. Graduate study in the mathematical sciences does not, after all, tend to attract the raving extroverts of this world. So I think that Choi does get her character essentially right; her father being a math professor was presumably of some help in this regard.

A final note: the book is highly reminiscent of Heinrich Böll's 1974 novel, "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum", adapted for film in 1975 by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta (and later as a 1984 made for TV movie in the U.S., starring Marlo Thomas and Kris Kristofferson). Both books focus on a central character whose natural reserve and desire for privacy result in demonization and suspicion by the press and the authorities. I had a summer job in Berlin in 1975, and there was much lively debate about Böll's book and the film adaptation. One can only dream of a similarly engaged debate in the U.S.; Choi's book should at least provoke readers to think about the questions involved.

I highly recommend "A Person of Interest".

This book is a highly poignant examination of how the combination of personality, circumstances, otherness, and a climate of hysteria can result in becoming a "person of interest" to law enforcement agencies, unleashing both official and community forces that can virtually destroy a life regardless of ultimate guilt. When aging professor Lee, teaching mathematics at a small mid-Western college, is nearly killed by the blast from a mail-bomb opened by a colleague in the adjacent office, his strained relationships in the dept, his Asian background, his failure to evince sufficient sympathy, and his nervous behavior around authorities make him a convenient target.

The author really gets into the mind of Professor Lee as he flashes back through his life regarding his secondary professional status, his resentments and insecurities, his concern with appearances, and his failed relationships both professional and marital. Lee is not a particularly sympathetic character, but the author very carefully, even tediously, captures the life of a man who seemed to be perpetually maladjusted. It is not surprising that his reaction to an unsigned letter shortly after the bombing, believing that it came from a former colleague seeking some sort of revenge because Lee had absconded with his wife some thirty years prior, generates suspicion.

The book can go rather slowly: the writing is not without its complexity and dexterity. The hunt for the bomber occurs mostly in the background, as Lee's plight occupies the front stage. The book is not a "thriller"; it is a psychological profile of a man set adrift from his precarious comfort zone. Don't read the book for its action. The connection to the Unabomber story is implied, but is hardly key to the book.

This novel presents me with a dilemma. I found it slow reading and perplexing, yet all the reviews I have read were laudatory. I found the plot and characters confusing, yet reviewers praised the novel in the highest terms. In fact, I didn't find the story or the characters interesting, and in many ways illogical. How could that be?

The premise is a relatively simple one. Professor Lee comes to the United States from Asia in his late 20's, goes to graduate school, earns a doctorate in mathematics, becomes a professor, gains tenure. So far so good. Where he goes wrong is having an affair with the wife of a fellow graduate student, who later marries and divorces him after they have a daughter. He goes on living alone with little or no interaction with the community or fellow workers. A bomb kills a star professor in the next office, and Lee later becomes a person of interest to FBI investigators, with resultant publicity and its effect on his reputation on and off campus.

The novel apparently is a psychological study of Lee. But as it plods on, all kinds of extraneous information is foisted on the reader. While it had redeeming qualities and fairly good writing, I found it boring and poorly conceived. Others didn't. C'est la vie.

A Person of Interest builds on the same model as American Woman where Choi adds a fictional side to a real life event. First it was the Patty Hearst story, and this time the Unabomber meets up with Wen Ho Lee who was falsely accused of espionage. But Choi is even less interested in tying into real life in this book than with American Woman. Choi's interest is in how the truth can appear to be a malleable substance, but in the end the truth appears as an objective source around which we all revolve.

I'm not sure Choi would buy into this thought, but that is how the book plays out. Her main character, Professor Lee, is an undistinguished math professor close to retiring from an undistinguished Midwest school when his "hotshot" colleague is killed by a mail bomb. Although slightly injured himself in the blast, Lee emerges as a "person of interest," as the FBI struggle to piece together the truth. As we watch this emerge we step back into Lee's graduate career, his two failed marriages, his estranged daughter, and his own sleeplike existence in life.

While the FBI try to make their theories work, and fail, Lee is brought into focus as someone who has tried to make life work the way he wants, and fails. The clearest example is the infant child his first wife has with her first husband, although she was soon after having an affair with Lee. He refuses to see this child as part of their existence and his wife allows the child to be taken by her ex-husband. Lee's reality is that the child does not exist, but of course the truth is the child does exist and Lee's attempt to alter reality fails miserably. In addition, like the FBI he cannot shake his own theory of the bombing when he discovers the person he is sure is the bomber has been dead for many years. When reality does not conform to our thinking, we try to ignore it. We attempt to define the truth, when in fact the challenge in life is to live with the truths we are faced with.

The FBI run into the same problem with handling a truth different than what they expect. Lee could work out so well as the Unabomber that they are desperate to make it work, despite the fact (truth) that Lee offers them little hope. In the end, even the Unabomber (here called the "Brain Bomber") is someone who attempts to alter reality in part by creating his own truths. This is not to imply that reality and truth are identical, but in this case the character's inability to face reality does correspond with their inability to handle truth.

It is not often I wish for more writing -- great writers are able to convey a great deal with minimum amount of exposition. However, Choi introduces some characters which would be interesting to hear more about as they interact with the story. The abandoned infant son reemerges with a new name (Mark) and the dawning realization that his past as told to him is not the truth (more examples of people, in this case Christians, trying to alter the truth and failing). He is introduced and she creates as strong storyline and character with him, but the sudden ending leaves more unanswered questions. The same goes for Lee's estranged daughter who appears on the last page with a wave of hello at the airport. But this need for more is not just a prurient interest in how these characters turn out. All of these characters are now on a search for truth and seeing more of that journey would be interesting.

Choi's characters are always well drawn and interesting, no matter what their role in the story. Her writing is quick moving, yet thoughtful. She manages to pull off a lot with little action, and she puts forward a great deal of information without falling back on soliloquies to pull it off. Plus, while her writing explores some big topics, she knows how to create a great storyline which pulls the reader in to stay.

I very much looked forward to this book, and initially I was not disappointed. The first half-to-two thirds were quite rewarding. The writing was insightful, and the depth of character was indeed probing. I expected more of this and more nuance in the exploration of the moral issues that had been raised. With the entrance of the "lost" stepson, the novel began a smarmy decline and took on the aspects of the cheap detective story. Coincidences stretched the imagination - the reunion that closes the book for example. The unbelievable behavior of the, heretofore, so-clever Brain Bomber was highly implausible and ruined the promise of the early chapters of the book. In this case, the apparent urge to slough through Lee's earlier "escape" was so rushed and imperfect that it seemed to have been written under the confines of serial publication. Logical consistency was lacking in this respect and even in more superficial circumstances like a phone call's being made after the phone had been pulled from its connections. The response of the neighbors to Lee's "suspicious presence" was hackneyed and stereotypical. It was difficult to believe that the same person had written both "halves." This was my first read of anything by Choi. While disappointing, I have ordered "American Woman" in the hope that, as a finalist for a Pulitzer, the type of writing I saw in the first half will be preserved throughout.

Susan Choi's unique talent is to take fiction based loosely on real people or real events and make her fictional portrayal of those real-life counterparts simultaneously more provocative and, somehow, even more true than the events that inspired them. In her last novel, AMERICAN WOMAN, Choi reimagined the Patty Hearst kidnapping case. Now, in A PERSON OF INTEREST, she conflates the Unabomber murders with the Wen Ho Lee spy controversy, creating a case that propels its protagonist into two most uncomfortable situations --- becoming a reluctant object of notoriety and being forced to confront his own sad past.

Lee is an aging professor of mathematics at an unnamed, distinctly undistinguished Midwestern college. Frustrated with his department chair's repeated entreaties for Lee to retire and make way for a younger (untenured) professor with a lower salary, Lee also finds himself becoming increasingly resentful of the department's new "hotshot" professor. Hendley is a young, handsome, charismatic computer scientist who practically has to turn students away from office hours, while Lee can't entice any pupils to stop in for course advice, let alone a friendly chat.

When Hendley is seriously wounded by a package bomb delivered to his office while Lee is in the office right next door, Lee is shocked by his own initial reaction to the blast: "Oh, good." Coming face to face with his obvious antipathy toward Hendley, Lee is also drawn back to reflect on his own history. In a field where geniuses emerge only in their 20s, where 30-year-olds are over the hill, Lee fought an uphill battle from the beginning. An immigrant from an East Asian country, Lee came to the United States as a young man; despite learning excellent English (so adeptly that he can correct native speakers' grammar), he was always at a disadvantage, starting graduate school at a large Midwestern university at a much more advanced age than many of his hotshot colleagues.

Lee's history of scholastic disappointment is also wrapped up in his personal history. Twice divorced from two very different women (about whom he has very different memories and responses), Lee is now estranged from his only daughter. Living in a nearly empty house (his second ex-wife took almost everything of value, including most of the furniture and the paintings on the walls) in a sterile suburb, suffering from chronic insomnia, Lee comes to terms with his own irrelevance nearly every day of his life.

At first, Lee's propulsion into fame following Hendley's attack is welcomed; he relishes his professorial appearance on national television. But when his fame draws the attention of an unwelcome figure from Lee's past, Lee retreats unhappily into his own history. And when Lee's suspicious behavior draws the attention of the FBI, who name him a "Person of Interest" in the bombing case, he comes to reflect on the extent to which he has become an outsider, not only in his country and community, but perhaps even to himself.

A PERSON OF INTEREST is a suspenseful narrative, almost a literary mystery novel. The identity of the anti-technology bomber, a bitter individual who seeks to rid the world of war by killing and maiming scientists who work on military-related projects, is cleverly hinted at throughout the book and revealed only near the climactic end.

Primarily, however, Choi's novel excels as a character study. She thoroughly explores Lee's personality, from examining the confident, self-assured young immigrant he was in his grad school years to tracing the downtrodden, rigid, resentful old man he has become in the intervening years. Thematically, she also raises provocative questions about the tenuousness of outsiders' acceptance into American society and the extent of suspicion that has infiltrated the American psyche in recent years. Despite his nearly colorless personality --- at least on the surface --- Lee will, in fact, become a "person of interest" to any reader fortunate enough to discover Choi's thought-provoking page-turner.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

I have never felt so bad or understood the stigma of being named a person of interest, Choi does such a good job storytelling. I did not put the book down until I was finished. It was worth a sleepless night.

A Person of Interest builds on the same model as American Woman where Choi adds a fictional side to a real life event. First it was the Patty Hearst story, and this time the Unabomber meets up with Wen Ho Lee who was falsely accused of espionage. But Choi is even less interested in tying into real life in this book than with American Woman. Choi's interest is in how the truth can appear to be a malleable substance, but in the end the truth appears as an objective source around which we all revolve.

I'm not sure Choi would buy into this thought, but that is how the book plays out. Her main character, Professor Lee, is an undistinguished math professor close to retiring from an undistinguished Midwest school when his "hotshot" colleague is killed by a mail bomb. Although slightly injured himself in the blast, Lee emerges as a "person of interest," as the FBI struggle to piece together the truth. As we watch this emerge we step back into Lee's graduate career, his two failed marriages, his estranged daughter, and his own sleeplike existence in life.

While the FBI try to make their theories work, and fail, Lee is brought into focus as someone who has tried to make life work the way he wants, and fails. The clearest example is the infant child his first wife has with her first husband, although she was soon after having an affair with Lee. He refuses to see this child as part of their existence and his wife allows the child to be taken by her ex-husband. Lee's reality is that the child does not exist, but of course the truth is the child does exist and Lee's attempt to alter reality fails miserably. In addition, like the FBI he cannot shake his own theory of the bombing when he discovers the person he is sure is the bomber has been dead for many years. When reality does not conform to our thinking, we try to ignore it. We attempt to define the truth, when in fact the challenge in life is to live with the truths we are faced with.

The FBI run into the same problem with handling a truth different than what they expect. Lee could work out so well as the Unabomber that they are desperate to make it work, despite the fact (truth) that Lee offers them little hope. In the end, even the Unabomber (here called the "Brain Bomber") is someone who attempts to alter reality in part by creating his own truths. This is not to imply that reality and truth are identical, but in this case the character's inability to face reality does correspond with their inability to handle truth.

It is not often I wish for more writing -- great writers are able to convey a great deal with minimum amount of exposition. However, Choi introduces some characters which would be interesting to hear more about as they interact with the story. The abandoned infant son reemerges with a new name (Mark) and the dawning realization that his past as told to him is not the truth (more examples of people, in this case Christians, trying to alter the truth and failing). He is introduced and she creates as strong storyline and character with him, but the sudden ending leaves more unanswered questions. The same goes for Lee's estranged daughter who appears on the last page with a wave of hello at the airport. But this need for more is not just a prurient interest in how these characters turn out. All of these characters are now on a search for truth and seeing more of that journey would be interesting.

Choi's characters are always well drawn and interesting, no matter what their role in the story. Her writing is quick moving, yet thoughtful. She manages to pull off a lot with little action, and she puts forward a great deal of information without falling back on soliloquies to pull it off. Plus, while her writing explores some big topics, she knows how to create a great storyline which pulls the reader in to stay.

I found this book entirely engaging and wonderfully well-written, true literature and at the same time suspenseful. The author moved smoothly back and forth in time, revealing characters slowly and fascinatingly.

Yes, it was a bit hard going at times to make out all of her meanings, but that was because she had so much to tell. If sentences need more than one reading to reveal their meaning it is because, in the case of this author, they have a satisfying depth of meaning.

I found Lee completely believable. This is an excellent book that deserves a wider audience. I plan to read Choi's other books, too.