Repeat After Me: A Novel [Hardcover]

Rachel DeWoskin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2009

A dazzlingly rich and funny novel by "a real China doll" (Entertainment Weekly)

Rachel DeWoskin is a writer who has been lauded for her "razor-sharp descriptions" (The Wall Street Journal), her "considerable cultural and linguistic resources" (The New Yorker), and her rare ability to offer a "real insider's look at life in modern China" (The Economist). Now DeWoskin, author of the laughout-loud funny and poignant Foreign Babes in Beijing, returns with a new novel about modern China and one American girl's struggle to find herself there.

Aysha is a twenty-two-year-old New Yorker putting the pieces of her life back in place after her parents' divorce and her own nervous breakdown when a young Chinese student named Da Ge flips her world upside-down. In a love story that spans decades and continents, from the Tiananmen Square incident to 9/11, New York City's Upper West Side to the terraced mountains of South China, Repeat After Me gives readers an alternately funny and painful glimpse of life and loss in between languages.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

DeWoskin, author of the memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing, presents a complex love story of cultural intersection, communication barriers, psychotic breakdowns and the search for life's big, unknowable truths. On Manhattan's Upper West Side, several months after 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre, young college dropout Aysha Silvermintz is recovering from an emotional collapse. Teaching an adult class on English as a second language, she meets a young Chinese student named Chen Da Ge, an even more unstable soul she finds herself falling for. Under the pretense of helping him gain citizenship, but hoping for a romantic relationship, Silvermintz agrees to marry Chen, whose feelings and past she still finds a mystery. Silvermintz narrates her story from 13 years later, and the parallel narrative finds Chen dead and Silvermintz living in Beijing with their daughter. Immersing them both in the world of Chen's past, Silvermintz struggles to gain a better understanding of her husband and their time together. A tender story of manic love and loss, this is a heartbreaking and uplifting novel with memorably off-kilter leads. (May)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Cultures don’t so much collide as coalesce in DeWoskin’s sparkling debut novel, which follows the relationship of two people with more in common than their backgrounds would suggest. Aysha Silvermintz is a marginally neurotic, sublimely needy young instructor of English to immigrants in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Her student Da Ge is an intriguingly taciturn, softly menacing Chinese national who came to the U.S. in the wake of the Tiananmen Square uprisings. What they lack in fluid communication skills they more than make up for in shared emotional fragility, born of family tragedies and personal failures. Aysha falls instantly and secretly in love with Da Ge, long before he bluntly asks her to marry him so he can become a U.S. citizen. Aysha becomes pregnant, but before she can tell him, Da Ge commits suicide just days before his citizenship is finalized. Determined to understand what plagued this tortured, enigmatic man, Aysha moves to China, where she’ll raise the daughter he never knew. Infusing her multicultural narrative with vibrant observations that glitter with laser-intense acuity, DeWoskin demonstrates a smart, sophisticated literary agility. --Carol Haggas

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (May 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590202228
• ISBN-13: 978-1590202227
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rachel spent her twenties in China as a consultant, writer, and the unlikely star of a nighttime soap opera called "Foreign Babes in Beijing." Her memoir of those years, Foreign Babes in Beijing, has been published in six countries and is being developed as a television series by HBO. Her novel Repeat After Me, about a young American ESL teacher, a troubled Chinese radical, and their unexpected New York romance, won a Foreward Magazine Book of the Year award. Her third book, the novel Big Girl Small, is forthcoming from FSG in 2011. Rachel has a BA in English from Columbia and an MFA in poetry from Boston University. Rachel divides her time between NYC, Chicago, and Beijing with her husband, playwright Zayd Dohrn, and their two little girls.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fantastic, May 14, 2009

By 

Jennifer (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Repeat After Me: A Novel (Hardcover)

"Repeat After Me" is so insightful and original - the characters are both funny and heartbreaking. I couldn't stop thinking about it afterwards.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Summer Read - You Can't Go Wrong With This One!, May 14, 2009

By 

davi strand "davi strand" (brooklyn, ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Repeat After Me: A Novel (Hardcover)

I love Rachel DeWoskin! Her memoir about living in China (FOREIGN BABES IN BEIJING) and becoming a soap opera star there is one of my favorite books to give as a gift because I know I can't go wrong with it. When I found out that she had a novel, I was thrilled and pre-ordered it right away. This book was definitely worth the wait. It was funny and beautifully written. I loved the intercultural romance story and that it takes place in both China and New York. I couldn't put this book down, and even though I tried to savor it as I got to the end, I read it in practically one sitting. I already gave away my copy to share the love, so now I'm going to have to order another one!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story for the world we live in now, May 31, 2009

By 

Gail Handley (Toronto, Ontario) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Repeat After Me: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is not an easy review to write, because I am still somewhat inside this book. A committed fan of Foreign Babes in Beijing, I was eager to see what author Rachel DeWoskin would do in fiction.

Repeat After Me is a brilliant book, one of the most compelling novels I have read in years. I am still inside the book because in reading I became so engaged with the central relationship that I have not fully digested the outcome. Not only could I not put the book down until I finished it, having finished it, I cannot quite put the story out of my mind.

Aysha, the young New York teacher of English as a Second Language tells her story in three different languages, her narrator's voice, broken but very expressive letters from her favorite Chinese student with whom she becomes involved. and subtle dialogs that cross linguistic, generational, and gender lines, not to mention boundaries of "normal" discourse. A complex and deeply moving story unfolds in the development and intersections of these narratives.

Although this book is about words, language, and communication, it is not at all a wordy book. DeWoskin is also a published poet, and the text reflects a poet's precision, economy, and depth. Precise language is natural for the narrator. Aysha is somewhat obsessive about words, obsessive beyond the normal occupational hazard of an English language teacher.

I barely finished reading the book when I found myself randomly rereading pages, discovering some of the foreshadowing that drives the story forward. A lot happens in Repeat After Me that is both inevitable and surprising. Each chapter is layered, telling stories in three different decades. It is clear that we are moving in and around the 1980s, 1990s, and current decade, but I felt the pieces fit together tightly like an embroidery. I never felt lost. I never looked for a map. I never lacked a clear view of where we were and why we were there. And I never lacked an ominous feeling of where we might be going. This is a story of two, or maybe three key people, three generations, two cultures and two countries, a story for the world we live in now. It is one of those rare works of fiction that abounds in crucial truths for our own lives. (Equally rare is that I will probably read it again, sooner rather than later. I guess that's my own kind of "repeat.")