Started: June 16
Finished: July 13
Notes: I've had this book a few years now. I don't remember why I bought it. Something must have stirred my interest. Guess now I'll find out.
Mini review: Damn. This novel is a tour de force. It doesn't start that way. In fact, it's somewhat slow until the last quarter, but then it packs a punch in the end. An illegal immigrant to the U.S. from China meets and ends up in a relationship with an American soldier just returned from Iraq. The writing is told almost in a documentary style with very little direct feeling or thought from the characters, almost like a screenplay with mostly action and dialogue, but it works here. And the backdrop, the world these characters find themselves in, it is a constant barrage of the seedier elements of the American life, not obviously judgmental, but simply hitting the reader again and again with basic examples of what we Americans find around ourselves and take for granted day after day ... and most of it doesn't necessarily say good things about us or our nation. Not the greatest writing I've come across, not even this year, but still a damn good novel and worth reading.
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