A Gesture Life: A Novel (edició 2000)

“Doc” Hata recently retired from his occupation as the owner of a medical supply store. He has never married and his adopted teenage daughter Sunny has left home. Reflecting back upon his life as a Japanese immigrant of Korean ethnicity living in the United States, he feels he has achieved a high status and is well respected in his community of Bedley Run. However, demons of his past, including a forbidden love, failure to marry, and an unsatisfactory relationship with his adopted daughter, often surface in thoughts of his life both in Japan and the United States.

In The Gesture Life, the author provides a thought-provoking examination of how one Oriental man conducts his life in order to be accepted and deemed “proper” by others of his community. Parts of the story seem a bit hard to follow because of movement back and forth in time, occasional significant scenes too sketchily described, and lack of important history (especially Sunny’s childhood). Nevertheless, the novel succeeds in its beautiful use of language and ability to evoke a wide range of emotions as it poignantly examines one man’s feelings. It is an attention-getting, fascinating story, especially about the comfort girls of the Imperial Red Army during World War II. The novel makes a major contribution to American literature about the Asian immigrant ( )

A pretty fascinating story of loneliness and distance, which I related a lot to Stoicism and even Christianity, though the protagonist is a Korean/Japanese immigrant living in affluent upstate New York. ( )

Chang-rae Lee is an amazing writer. I can’t remember the last time I read writing this good from a Contemporary writer, his prose are beautiful. The story itself is rather secondary to the writing, and honestly in a lesser writer’s hands I would have stopped reading it. The story line is basically two-fold, Franklin Hata’s experience as a Japanese military field medic during WWII where he falls in love with a Korean Comfort woman, and his life in an upper middle-class NY suburb after the war. The story lines are rather depressing and not particularly compelling. I can see why some people have said in reviews that it is boring, and disjointed, but he does such a wonderful job of getting in the skin of Franklin Hata that he pulls you into the character makes you feel Hata’s own quiet desperation.

Lee explores many themes in this book, identity (racial and social), what makes up a life?-is it one that you set up as a window display, or is it one that you actually live and experience without thought of the consequences, and of course it is about relationships; father-daughter, friendships, and romantic love.

I would recommend this book to people who enjoy reading excellent writing, and it would make a good book club selection to explore and discuss the many themes and Hata’s character. This is a book that will no be everyone’s cup of tea though.
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A Gesture Life is the elegant story of Franklin "Doc" Hata, a Japanese man living in suburban New York. He is a proper man quietly living out his days after retiring from the medical supply business. He has a beautiful house and garden and what appears to be a calm life. Everyone respects him, but no one really knows him. As we delve deeper into his history we learn of many rippling disturbances. We discover an adoptive daughter, mysteriously estranged from Hata, with a child of her own. We learn of a relationship with a widow who he cared for deeply but to whom he couldn't quite commit. We don't even fully understand how close they became or why they drifted apart. Through Hata's memories we revisit World War II and his position as medic in Rangoon. We watch the unfolding and blossoming of a relationship with "K" a comfort woman; a relationship that ends in tragedy, as most wartime relationships do. In the end, it's Hata's relationship with daughter, Sunny, that is the most compelling. Theirs is a deep and complicated bond. ( )

A slow, introspective book. "Doc" Hata, post-retirement, evaluates his relationship with his adopted daughter and with a now-deceased lover. It is only slowly that his experiences in WWII are revealed, and it is up to us to ponder how they have affected these subsequent relationships.
In some sense, it confirms my opinion of Japanese as being very concerned with maintaining right relations with community, of meeting one's duty, of self abnegation before offending others. ( )