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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us May 14, 2005 Book Review | A Gesture Life Book explores choices in vivid detail By Chris Honore Tidings reviewer In “A Gesture Life,” Chang-rae Lee tells the story of Franklin Hata, a quiet, reticent man, recently retired, who lives in Bedley Run, a small, affluent village in the Northeast. In fact, Hata, as the novel’s central character, proves to be so circumspect, so careful in his decisions and interactions, that the novel takes on an initial sense of stasis, as if nothing is happening. Yet, it soon becomes clear that a great deal is happening in this subdued narrative, made evident as Hata weighs and considers those moments when his life intersected with others and, because of his reflexive reluctance to engage, gradually comes to realize that he has missed countless opportunities to influence the outcome of events. One experience in particular takes place during WWII when he was a Japanese soldier, officer and medic stationed on a small tropical island in the South Pacific. Though the war is drawing to a close, the camp receives five Korean women, called “comfort women,” who were ordered to make themselves available to the men of the camp as needed. The inhumanity, the horror inherent in what they were required to do proves to be staggering. These “women,” mere girls, really, innocent and unsuspecting at first, are so cruelly abused and degraded that they soon become casualties of the unspeakable, wishing only death before giving “comfort.” Ultimately it becomes clear that Hata’s experience in the camp, the moral dilemma posed by the arrival of the women, would frame all of his remaining years. At some point soon after the war, Hata leaves Japan and moves to Bedley Run, where he owns and operates a medical supply business. He is called “Doc Hata” and he cultivates, with great attention and effort, a place in the community of respect and influence. He never marries but chooses to adopt a young Korean girl who he names Sunn, a name filled with irony. What he discovers is that he cannot penetrate his own reticence, even with his daughter. Feeling estranged and feeling the abiding distance that surrounds her father, Sunny drifts away — and then is gone altogether. What characterizes Lee’s prose, his manner of letting the narrative slowly and carefully unfold, is that he allows Hata to puzzle over the pieces of his austere and restrained life. What he struggles with is the reality that while he has lived cautiously, with great care, he has also remained disengaged, most especially from those he loves — his daughter and a woman who would have happily joined him in life. And it is his reserve, his unwillingness to make full contact, to disclose who he is to others or to himself, that diminishes him and makes him feel incomplete. Too often Americans assume that if there is “action” in entertainment and fiction it means something significant is taking place. But Lee’s clear and precise prose, brilliantly crafted, puts the lie to that notion. As he points out in this fine novel, life can be painfully incremental. And yet, in its totality, as Hata discovers, life is filled with motion, with events and decisions, the significance of which may only be understood much later, and then with a profound regret. What Hata finds as he peels back the layers of his past is that he wants more than a gesture life, more than just a semblance of living. He wishes to be, above all, part of what he calls “the massing.” He wants to return from what has been for him a sad and prolonged exile — from himself, from his daughter, and, as he concludes, his country of origin — wishing only to find a redemptive reconciliation that has eluded him for far too long. “A Gesture Life” is a beautifully realized novel, elegant, resonant in its use of language, and rich in its perceptiveness, one not to be missed. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Online Pharmacy Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations Hammocks Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams