Waiting: A Novel [Paperback]

Ha Jin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 19, 2000

"In Waiting, Ha Jin portrays the life of Lin Kong, a dedicated doctor torn by his love for two women: one who belongs to the New China of the Cultural Revolution, the other to the ancient traditions of his family's village. Ha Jin profoundly understands the conflict between the individual and society, between the timeless universality of the human heart and constantly shifting politics of the moment. With wisdom, restraint, and empathy for all his characters, he vividly reveals the complexities and subtleties of a world and a people we desperately need to know."--Judges' Citation, National Book Award

"Ha Jin's novel could hardly be less theatrical, yet we're immediately engaged by its narrative structure, by its wry humor and by the subtle, startling shifts it produces in our understanding of characters and their situation."--The New York Times Book Review

"Subtle and complex--his best work to date. A moving meditation on the effects of time upon love."--The Washington Post

"A high achievement indeed."--Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books

"A portrait of Chinese provincial life that terrifies with its emptiness even more than with its all-pervasive vulgarity. The poet in [Jin] intersperses these human scenes with achingly beautiful vignettes of natural beauty."--Los Angeles Times

"A simple love story that transcends cultural barriers--. From the idyllic countryside to the small towns in northeast China, Jin's depictions are filled with an earthy poetic grace--. Jin's account of daily life in China is convincing and rich in detail."--The Chicago Tribune

"Compassionate, earthy, robust, and wise, Waiting blends provocative allegory with all-too-human comedy. The result touches and reveals, bringing to life a singular world in its spectacular intricacy."--Gish Jen, author of Who's Irish?

"A remarkable love story. Ha Jin's understanding of the human heart and the human condition transcends borders and time. Waiting is an outstanding literary achievement."--Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." Like a fairy tale, Ha Jin's masterful novel of love and politics begins with a formula--and like a fairy tale, Waiting uses its slight, deceptively simple framework to encompass a wide range of truths about the human heart. Lin Kong is a Chinese army doctor trapped in an arranged marriage that embarrasses and repels him. (Shuyu has country ways, a withered face, and most humiliating of all, bound feet.) Nevertheless, he's content with his tidy military life, at least until he falls in love with Manna, a nurse at his hospital. Regulations forbid an army officer to divorce without his wife's consent--until 18 years have passed, that is, after which he is free to marry again. So, year after year Lin asks his wife for his freedom, and year after year he returns from the provincial courthouse: still married, still unable to consummate his relationship with Manna. Nothing feeds love like obstacles placed in its way--right? But Jin's novel answers the question of what might have happened to Romeo and Juliet had their romance been stretched out for several decades. In the initial confusion of his chaste love affair, Lin longs for the peace and quiet of his "old rut." Then killing time becomes its own kind of rut, and in the end, he is forced to conclude that he "waited eighteen years just for the sake of waiting."

There's a political allegory here, of course, but it grows naturally from these characters' hearts. Neither Lin nor Manna is especially ideological, and the tumultuous events occurring around them go mostly unnoticed. They meet during a forced military march, and have their first tender moment during an opera about a naval battle. (While the audience shouts, "Down with Japanese Imperialism!" the couple holds hands and gazes dreamily into each other's eyes.) When Lin is in Goose Village one summer, a mutual acquaintance rapes Manna; years later, the rapist appears on a TV report titled "To Get Rich Is Glorious," after having made thousands in construction. Jin resists hammering ideological ironies like these home, but totalitarianism's effects on Lin are clear:

Let me tell you what really happened, the voice said. All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others' opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. You were misled by your own frustration and passivity, believing that what you were not allowed to have was what your heart was destined to embrace.

Ha Jin himself served in the People's Liberation Army, and in fact left his native country for the U.S. only in 1985. That a non-native speaker can produce English of such translucence and power is truly remarkable--but really, his prose is the least of the miracles here. Improbably, Jin makes an unconsummated 18-year love affair loom as urgent as political terror or war, while history-changing events gain the immediacy of a domestic dilemma. Gracefully phrased, impeccably paced, Waiting is the kind of realist novel you thought was no longer being written. --Mary Park --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Jin's quiet but absorbing second novel (after In the Pond) captures the poignant dilemma of an ordinary man who misses the best opportunities in his life simply by trying to do his duty—as defined first by his traditional Chinese parents and later by the Communist Party. Reflecting the changes in Chinese communism from the '60s to the '80s, the novel focuses on Lin Kong, a military doctor who agrees, as his mother is dying, to an arranged marriage. His bride, Shuyu, turns out to be a country woman who looks far older than her 26 years and who has, to Lin's great embarrassment, lotus (bound) feet. While Shuyu remains at Lin's family home in Goose Village, nursing first his mother and then his ailing father, and bearing Lin a daughter, Lin lives far away in an army hospital compound, visiting only once a year. Caught in a loveless marriage, Lin is attacted to a nurse, Manna Wu, an attachment forbidden by communist strictures. According to local Party rules, Lin cannot divorce his wife without her permission until they have been separated for 18 years. Although Jin infuses movement and some suspense into Lin's and Manna's sometimes resigned, sometimes impatient waiting—they will not consummate their relationship until Lin is free—it is only in the novel's third section, when Lin finally secures a divorce, that the story gathers real force. Though inaction is a risky subject and the thoughts of a cautious man make for a rather deliberate prose style (the first two sections describe the moments the characters choose not to act), the final chapters are moving and deeply ironic, proving again that this poet and award-winning short story writer can deliver powerful long fiction about a world alien to most Western readers. (Oct.) FYI: Jin served six years in the People's Liberation Army, and came to the U.S. in 1985.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (September 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375706410
• ISBN-13: 978-0375706417
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.7 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (325 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,433 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly elegant, November 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Waiting (Hardcover)

Reading this book one is reminded of the old Hemingway saw about how fiction should only give away the tip of the iceberg. The graceful, simple prose of this book reveals just the smallest portion of the complex emotional and politcal currents that run beneath this story. This is the kind of book that, once you have finished, you cannot get out of your head. The book jacket calls Ha Jin a "sturdy realist," but that's not really right; his prose has much more in common with a modernist minimalism. A must read for anyone who thinks that fiction writing in America is moribund.

76 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicate and fascinating, June 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Waiting (Hardcover)

I believe I can understand the negative comments this book has received, but I do not agree with them. Having several Asian friends, I was fascinated by the glimpse into Chinese culture--not only the political landscape, but family relations. I think people may be expecting something more grandiose from this book since it is an award winner. Rather, this book is like its main character, subtle. The narrative is straight forward, and the story is literally about "waiting," waiting for a period in your life to begin. I think what this book gives us, besides a wonderful peek into Chinese society, is a lesson to find what we love in life and revel in it. This is not a book to "polish off quickly." Rather it is one to read and think about each word, and the way those words are presented. I loved it. I finished the book several weeks ago, and I still think of Lin, and wonder if he will ever really know happiness.

65 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascintating, October 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Waiting (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - as much for what it reveals of China as for the plot. The three people at the center of this novel --husband, wife and the 'girlfriend' (not mistress, that step is too dangerous for them to risk) who waits 18 years for him to get a divorce-- are in a state of limbo for much of their adult lives, constricted as they are by the laws of their society and by the limitations of their experience. This is a fast, easy book to read, but I don't mean this to sound negative, much is going on beneath the surface of an apparently straightforward story, and it left me contemplating how much we all take for granted about the laws of our society, how rarely we question the conventions we're brought up with. Well worth reading.