A Gesture Life, Changrae Lee
A Gesture Life, Changrae Lee
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A Gesture Life

Author: Chang-rae Lee

Narrator: Greg Watanabe

Unabridged: 12 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 04/17/2018


Synopsis

The second novel from the critically acclaimed New York Times–bestselling author Chang-rae Lee.

His remarkable debut novel was called "rapturous" (The New York Times Book Review), "revelatory" (Vogue), and "wholly innovative" (Kirkus Reviews). It was the recipient of six major awards, including the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN award. Now Chang-rae Lee has written a powerful and beautifully crafted second novel that leaves no doubt about the extraordinary depth and range of his talent.

A Gesture Life is the story of a proper man, an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet as his story unfolds, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II.

In A Gesture Life, Chang-rae Lee leads us with dazzling control through a taut, suspenseful story about love, family, and community—and the secrets we harbor. As in Native Speaker, he writes of the ways outsiders conform in order to survive and the price they pay for doing so. It is a haunting, breathtaking display of talent by an acclaimed young author.

About The Author

Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Selected by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best writers under forty, Chang-rae Lee teaches writing at Princeton University. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sang Ik on December 30, 2017

I find it interesting that so many people review books based on their judgement on much of what 'should' have happened or how the book 'should' have been written or even more interestingly, how a character should have been (e.g Dr. Hata was too unemotional, etc). I feel Chang Rae Lee gets the short......more

Goodreads review by Jenny Mckeel on October 20, 2007

I think Gesture Life goes in my top five favorite books. I recommend it to everyone. It's about a Korea-born Japanese-American man who is forced to face, and in certain ways is attempting to face, the legacy of a lifetime of refusing to feel. It takes place in the present and goes back and forth to v......more

Goodreads review by Steph on February 17, 2013

How does one fill a void for which there is no hole? This seems to be the question that Franklin Hata is asking as he reflects on his life and the lives that have intertwined with his. How surface acquaintances and weekday friendships can come so easily to a renowned and beloved member of a small, u......more

Goodreads review by Gail on August 26, 2014

A Gesture Life is a beautiful and subtle novel, one of the best I read this year. It is the story of "Doc" Hata , a Korean raised as Japanese who moves to New England after serving as a medic for Japan in WWII. Since childhood Hata has made fitting in and being accepted and respected the single goal......more

Goodreads review by M.M. Strawberry on October 06, 2021

I found this book to be really meh. I found this in a used bookstore, and the synopsis on the back cover sounded interesting to me, so I decided to get it. I love historical fiction, so this seemed like a good choice. I found myself unable to connect with anyone in the story. The story happens more i......more


Quotes

"A beautiful, solitary, remarkably tender book."—The New York Times Book Review"A Gesture Life is the touching, multilayered rumination of an uneasy psyche. It is also a tragic, horrifying page-turner, whose evocation of wartime victims is unforgettable...A deeply involving tale, no less so because we realize, almost from the first chapter, that we can't trust Hata's version of events. [Lee] enlists the reader's full energies to interpret this enigmatic speaker, who saddens, baffles and unfuriates us all at once."—Chicago Tribune"Once again, this gifted young author has given us a beautifully tapestried story of seeking identity and acceptance in another culture while remaining separate from the tug of it."—The Christian Science Monitor"Lee elegantly creates suspense out of the seemingly static story of a man trying hard not to feel. He has written a wise and humane novel that both amplifies the themes of identity and exile he addressed in Native Speaker, and creates a wonderfully resonant portrait of a man caught between two cultures and two lives."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times


Awards

  • ALA Notable Book
  • Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
  • Asian American Literary Award
  • IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
  • New York Times Notable Book
  • New Yorker Book Award
  • North Atlantic Independent Book Award