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The Foreign Student
"This wonderful hybrid of a novel--a love story, a war story, a novel of manners--introduces a writer of enchanting gifts, a beautiful heart wedded to a beautiful imagination. How else does Susan Choi so fully inhabit characters from disparate backgrounds, with such brilliant wit and insight? The Foreign Student stirs up great and lovely emotions." — Francisco Goldman, author of The Ordinary Seaman The Foreign Student is the story of a young Korean man, scarred by war, and the deeply troubled daughter of a wealthy Southern American family. In 1955, a new student arrives at a small college in the Tennessee mountains. Chuck is shy, speaks English haltingly, and on the subject of his earlier life in Korea he will not speak at all. Then he meets Katherine, a beautiful and solitary young woman who, like Chuck, is haunted by some dark episode in her past. Without quite knowing why, these two outsiders are drawn together, each sensing in the other the possibility of salvation. Moving between the American South and South Korea, between an adolescent girl's sexual awakening and a young man's nightmarish memories of war, The Foreign Student is a powerful and emotionally gripping work of fiction.
336 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1998
115 people are currently reading
1571 people want to read
About the author
Susan Choi
23 books1,021 followersSusan Choi was born in South Bend, Indiana and was raised there and in Houston, Texas. She studied literature at Yale and writing at Cornell, and worked for several years as a fact-checker for The New Yorker.
Her latest novel, Trust Exercise, was the winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, and was a national bestseller. Trust Exercise was also named a best book of 2019 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Bustle, Town & Country, Publishers Weekly, The Millions, The Chicago Tribune, and TIME.
Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.
With David Remnick she co-edited the anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker, and her non-fiction has appeared in publications such as Vogue, Tin House, Allure, O, and The New York Times and in anthologies such as Money Changes Everything and Brooklyn Was Mine.
A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Pete Wells and their sons Dexter and Elliot
Her latest novel, Trust Exercise, was the winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, and was a national bestseller. Trust Exercise was also named a best book of 2019 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Bustle, Town & Country, Publishers Weekly, The Millions, The Chicago Tribune, and TIME.
Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.
With David Remnick she co-edited the anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker, and her non-fiction has appeared in publications such as Vogue, Tin House, Allure, O, and The New York Times and in anthologies such as Money Changes Everything and Brooklyn Was Mine.
A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Pete Wells and their sons Dexter and Elliot
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 109 reviews
March 6, 2024
“After a moment, only yes struck him so finally, with such actual love for her, that he hung up the telephone that instant, not out of anger, but because that rough sound in her voice was the thing he wanted to keep”
This is a spare, subtle novel about two adrift souls who fatefully meet, while trying to deal with the pains of loneliness and isolation, of violence and PTSD.
Chuck is a Korean War veteran about to study at the University of the South, who parses his words carefully, trying not to reveal too much about his past traumatic experiences.
Katherine is a Southern belle who falls for Addison, the enigmatic friend of her father’s, and whose affair with Katherine turns into a masochistic relationship out of mind games and manipulation.
This is a spare, subtle novel about two adrift souls who fatefully meet, while trying to deal with the pains of loneliness and isolation, of violence and PTSD.
Chuck is a Korean War veteran about to study at the University of the South, who parses his words carefully, trying not to reveal too much about his past traumatic experiences.
Katherine is a Southern belle who falls for Addison, the enigmatic friend of her father’s, and whose affair with Katherine turns into a masochistic relationship out of mind games and manipulation.
April 7, 2011
I was initially attracted to this book because of the title; I've studied abroad myself and thought reading about a foreign student in America (especially 50 years ago when the population, at least in Tennessee where the story is set, was more homogeneous) would be fun. It has a some redeeming qualities--most notably the character development and historic interest--but entertaining reading? Not so much.
For starters, I found it a slow read. Perhaps, as one other reviewer has mentioned, that's because there is too much exposition or because it's overwritten; at any rate, Choi's writing didn't hold my attention. Equally problematic is the structure. Roughly half the novel is set in the "present day" of 1955-1956, while other chapters fill in the backstory of the main characters: Chang, the Korean student, and Katherine, his American love interest. (I might add that, as is sadly common in fiction, the woman's entire backstory seems to consist of relationships with men, while the man has actually had a life.) Essentially, there are three storylines: Chang's life, Katherine's (love) life, and the year they're both at Sewanee... and these different sections are arranged awkwardly, with the backstory taking up too much space at the expense of the overall plot, especially toward the end. Revelations about the past have their place, but at least the last 10-20 pages of a book should return to the present, in my opinion. Besides which, the backstory has no "anchor" in the text; it isn't Chang telling Katherine about his life, but random chapters featuring him in the past elbowing their way in between the "present-day" chapters.
Then there are other problems. The relationship between Chang and Katherine is well-written, but a little far-fetched; the entire year they are supposed to be falling in love, they only bother to see each other 5 or 6 times. Katherine's sexual relationship, at age 14, with a man in his forties, is just plain repulsive. And then there are Chang's English skills. Fictional characters regularly learn languages with unrealistic speed and ease, but Chang is the first I've seen to have the opposite problem. He's supposed to have worked for several years as an English-language translator and interpreter before the story begins, yet he's still incapable of using the simple past tense in conversation. I guess it's good to have a counterweight to all those other books where characters go from 0 to fluent in a month, but no more realistic; his dialogue seems designed to emphasize his foreignness at the expense of logic.
Still, there are things to like about this book. I particularly enjoyed seeing the portrayal of 1950s college life, since it was incredibly different from the modern-day college experience. The characters are realistic and well-developed. And I now know more about the Korean War than I did before. I wouldn't recommend this book, but if you're interested, try getting a library copy before buying.
For starters, I found it a slow read. Perhaps, as one other reviewer has mentioned, that's because there is too much exposition or because it's overwritten; at any rate, Choi's writing didn't hold my attention. Equally problematic is the structure. Roughly half the novel is set in the "present day" of 1955-1956, while other chapters fill in the backstory of the main characters: Chang, the Korean student, and Katherine, his American love interest. (I might add that, as is sadly common in fiction, the woman's entire backstory seems to consist of relationships with men, while the man has actually had a life.) Essentially, there are three storylines: Chang's life, Katherine's (love) life, and the year they're both at Sewanee... and these different sections are arranged awkwardly, with the backstory taking up too much space at the expense of the overall plot, especially toward the end. Revelations about the past have their place, but at least the last 10-20 pages of a book should return to the present, in my opinion. Besides which, the backstory has no "anchor" in the text; it isn't Chang telling Katherine about his life, but random chapters featuring him in the past elbowing their way in between the "present-day" chapters.
Then there are other problems. The relationship between Chang and Katherine is well-written, but a little far-fetched; the entire year they are supposed to be falling in love, they only bother to see each other 5 or 6 times. Katherine's sexual relationship, at age 14, with a man in his forties, is just plain repulsive. And then there are Chang's English skills. Fictional characters regularly learn languages with unrealistic speed and ease, but Chang is the first I've seen to have the opposite problem. He's supposed to have worked for several years as an English-language translator and interpreter before the story begins, yet he's still incapable of using the simple past tense in conversation. I guess it's good to have a counterweight to all those other books where characters go from 0 to fluent in a month, but no more realistic; his dialogue seems designed to emphasize his foreignness at the expense of logic.
Still, there are things to like about this book. I particularly enjoyed seeing the portrayal of 1950s college life, since it was incredibly different from the modern-day college experience. The characters are realistic and well-developed. And I now know more about the Korean War than I did before. I wouldn't recommend this book, but if you're interested, try getting a library copy before buying.
July 27, 2010
Beautifully written book that examines the culture shock of a young man arriving in the American South from Korea after the end of the Korean war. The parallels between his genteel upbringing before the war and the upbringing of a woman he meets in Tennessee after the war are interesting, as well as the examination of what happens to each, separately and together, to rip away all their childhood foundations and set them adrift to start over. I really loved this book
July 9, 2007
I loved this book. It is uplifting and heartbreaking. The two main characters, Chang and Katherine are amazing. The beginning is long and the writing style can try one's patience, but once the book is done you realize how attached you've become to each character. Chang is a very human and understandable person. His flaws are out in the open and his quite strength is admirable. He represents so many foreigns students people see everyday and do not give a second thought because their quietness and limitation of the English language makes them appear limited in emotion or what they can contribute to conversation. Katherine is also a truly independent woman of the 1950's. She strains against her weaknesses and tries to find happiness. She doesn't care what anyone thinks of her and lives life exactly how she wants. Both are incredibly inspiring.
Read
April 6, 2014This book was such a pleasant surprise. Years ago I had picked it off a giveaway shelf at work, having heard Choi was a talented writer, but I only got around to reading it recently. I know very little about the Korean War and I appreciated the look into it from this point of view. The romance was subtly drawn until it hits its fever pitch and then it was beautiful on the page. So glad to have found this book.
October 22, 2021
I made it about halfway through this before moving on. It felt dull even though I was interested in the main romance that was (I assume) developing.
March 21, 2020
A dear friend recommended Susan Choi's National Book Award winner TRUST EXERCISE. When I went to the New Haven library, it was, of course, out to another reader. In its stead, I picked up Choi's first novel, THE FOREIGN STUDENT, first published in 1998. It's a thrilling debut of an original voice. (Today, I ordered TRUST EXERCISE, despite having sworn that I would stop buying books while we wait out the pandemic.)
THE FOREIGN STUDENT follows Chang, known to most as Chuck, born into a well-to-do Korean family, academics and scholars and politicians. His family's idyllic life is destroyed during the Korean War. At various points in the story, Choi details the degradations of that era, and the tribulations which Chuck must suffer to survive.
Interspersed with these harrowing chapters are the story of Chuck's post-war life in America, as a scholarship student at Sewanee, the University of the South, in rural Tennessee. To say he's a fish out of water imagines that there is even a sea near him. Yet various figures adopt the refugee, and even come to care for him. None more so than Katherine Monroe, a rebellious rich girl with a complicated past of her own. Their unlikely friendship blossoms into an equally incongruous romance.
Choi creates a world rich with detail, from swank faculty parties to a grimy Chicago summer to the terrifying dullness of waiting and waiting and waiting. She understands the oppressive nature of weather, and how it dulls the senses into restless torpor. Whether it's war-torn Pusan or the sultry summer South or the steamy urban gardens of New Orleans, her sense of place is utterly palpable.
Chuck / Chang is a figure remote to almost everyone he meets, including the reader, yet he remains oddly compelling for his sheer determination. The novel takes a surprising swing in the final 100 pages, about which I will tell you nothing. Let's just say it balances the past while opening up the future, in a way that tears at your heart.
A wonderful diversion from a world gone mad.
Obviously, we're all likely going to read a lot in the days ahead. Please keep in touch, all!
THE FOREIGN STUDENT follows Chang, known to most as Chuck, born into a well-to-do Korean family, academics and scholars and politicians. His family's idyllic life is destroyed during the Korean War. At various points in the story, Choi details the degradations of that era, and the tribulations which Chuck must suffer to survive.
Interspersed with these harrowing chapters are the story of Chuck's post-war life in America, as a scholarship student at Sewanee, the University of the South, in rural Tennessee. To say he's a fish out of water imagines that there is even a sea near him. Yet various figures adopt the refugee, and even come to care for him. None more so than Katherine Monroe, a rebellious rich girl with a complicated past of her own. Their unlikely friendship blossoms into an equally incongruous romance.
Choi creates a world rich with detail, from swank faculty parties to a grimy Chicago summer to the terrifying dullness of waiting and waiting and waiting. She understands the oppressive nature of weather, and how it dulls the senses into restless torpor. Whether it's war-torn Pusan or the sultry summer South or the steamy urban gardens of New Orleans, her sense of place is utterly palpable.
Chuck / Chang is a figure remote to almost everyone he meets, including the reader, yet he remains oddly compelling for his sheer determination. The novel takes a surprising swing in the final 100 pages, about which I will tell you nothing. Let's just say it balances the past while opening up the future, in a way that tears at your heart.
A wonderful diversion from a world gone mad.
Obviously, we're all likely going to read a lot in the days ahead. Please keep in touch, all!
June 16, 2022
Some charming (and not so charming, I'm looking at you Fran and Charles) characters and some sobering insights into Korean wartime history, but my gosh this book could have used a more ruthless editor. 2.5 stars, read for class.
June 8, 2022
This was "read for class", just not mine - but maybe my mum won't be so disappointed in me now that I've at least pretended to be an English student for a week or so...
It's hard to tell how much I struggled with the book because of its slow pace, and how much was jetlag, but this wasn't an easy read. The story was interesting, if difficult at times, but getting to the end felt like a real slog and I don't think the pay-off of the final 50 pages or so needed to be quite so rushed, if the author had spent less time lingering on less engaging parts.
It's hard to tell how much I struggled with the book because of its slow pace, and how much was jetlag, but this wasn't an easy read. The story was interesting, if difficult at times, but getting to the end felt like a real slog and I don't think the pay-off of the final 50 pages or so needed to be quite so rushed, if the author had spent less time lingering on less engaging parts.
September 12, 2025
Two damaged souls intersect at a Southern university where they attempt to heal one another. One of them is a refugee from a brutal war (Korea) in which he was tortured almost beyond endurance and about which he refuses to speak. The other is a young woman who, as a teenager, was used and abused by a trusted family friend who continued to haunt/stalk her for years. Powerful, painful, unforgettable.
Read
February 28, 2025Reminder to myself that books on goodreads with a relatively low rating may still be worth reading. Thought this was a really “good read” and a lot better than trust exercise from what I remember. Need to learn more about Korean War too
May 25, 2020
I am on the library wait list for Susan Choi's Trust Exercises, but since this was available, I thought I'd give it a shot. I struggled a bit to get through, though ultimately enjoyed the story. The shifting narrative from Chang during the war to present day, and Katherine from her childhood to present day, drew me in. I learned quite a bit about the Korean War, too. Recommend, but this was not a quick read for me.
August 8, 2021
Not sure if I'm gonna finish this one, but it hit two personal notes for me:
1. There's an episode in Jackson, TN
2. There's a character that's struggling to focus on her summer reading list
1. There's an episode in Jackson, TN
2. There's a character that's struggling to focus on her summer reading list
September 23, 2011
Before I began this book, I had read an interview with Choi where she explains that with this, her first novel, she had to not only teach herself character development, dialogue, storytelling, etc., but that to meet the artistic challenge of maintaining her own interest long enough to actually craft the novel, she took up many tricks of the trade, such as alternating time periods, points of view, etc., which is what many reviewers found confusing. Admittedly, the opening chapter was a mess. I didn't know what was going on and was surprised her editor didn't attack it with a well-sharpened pencil. However, onwards after the novel developed into a gorgeous book. Choi's writing at its best is intricate, sharp, delicate, and supple exposing the vulnerable isolation of both its main characters, the Korean student Chuck and the local southerner, Katharine. There were so many moments when I found myself marveling at how Choi managed to court the edge of giving too much to providing just enough.
I am also particularly mindful of books with asian characters and a tendency for those characters to be written about as if they exist in another world that is difficult for non-asian characters to ever relate to - like a permanent barrier. I am especially appreciative that Chuck is not that sort. He is stared at, made fun of, set apart, and assailed by difficult choices that other chacters in the book may not understand or have to make themselves, sure, but he is also a part of the american fabric, a fully developed character who loves and is confused by himself and society just as much as any other.
This is definitely a book I will remember.
I am also particularly mindful of books with asian characters and a tendency for those characters to be written about as if they exist in another world that is difficult for non-asian characters to ever relate to - like a permanent barrier. I am especially appreciative that Chuck is not that sort. He is stared at, made fun of, set apart, and assailed by difficult choices that other chacters in the book may not understand or have to make themselves, sure, but he is also a part of the american fabric, a fully developed character who loves and is confused by himself and society just as much as any other.
This is definitely a book I will remember.
April 24, 2018
I'm so sad I didn't enjoy this book. The description of it made it seem so good, and I thought it was right up my alley. However, I'm disappointed by it. It had a slow start, and at first, I thought that that was ok because it'd pick up later on, but the further I got into it, the slower it seemed to go. I'm not a huge fan of flashbacks, but I'm especially not a fan of flashbacks when they're not labelled as such, and you have to spend a page or two trying to figure out if what you're reading is happening in the present time of the novel or in the novel's past.
The style made me think the author wanted to kind of emulate some of the old school classics with the in depth descriptions of everything I didn't care about. I felt like I was reading a modernized Thomas Hardy sometimes, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. Out of the characters, I was most interested in Katherine's story, but then her whole storyline with her father's best friend in his 40s sleeping with her, a 14 year old child at the time, turned me off. Eventually, I just started skimming because I wanted to get through it, and I was curious to see if Katherine and Chang ended up together.
Overall, great concept, not the best execution. Post-Korean War Southern America as seen through the eyes of a young Korean who lived through the war is a perspective we don't get often, and I really appreciate that aspect. But it just fell a little too short, flowed a little too slowly, and was a little too not enough for my personal liking.
The style made me think the author wanted to kind of emulate some of the old school classics with the in depth descriptions of everything I didn't care about. I felt like I was reading a modernized Thomas Hardy sometimes, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. Out of the characters, I was most interested in Katherine's story, but then her whole storyline with her father's best friend in his 40s sleeping with her, a 14 year old child at the time, turned me off. Eventually, I just started skimming because I wanted to get through it, and I was curious to see if Katherine and Chang ended up together.
Overall, great concept, not the best execution. Post-Korean War Southern America as seen through the eyes of a young Korean who lived through the war is a perspective we don't get often, and I really appreciate that aspect. But it just fell a little too short, flowed a little too slowly, and was a little too not enough for my personal liking.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 10, 2009
I had never fully imagined, though I have lived there, the chaos and hell of the Korean War -- especially as told through a young Korean male who loses his family and must escape being impressed or murdered by both armies. With her brilliant writing, Choi put me completely in his point of view. The portions of the book that deal with his life at an American university in the South are also wonderful.
March 20, 2008
This book moves along slowly and seriously, but it is rich with details about the Korean War and the experience of a Korean-American boy trying to find his place in the American South during the 50's. Susan Choi's language is dense and lyrical - her sentences are a joy and often shockingly profound.
November 29, 2011
A book club pick. The book was extremely slow & hard to follow. I totally lost interest about 75 pages into it. I kept thinking of other things to do, like vacumming the floor, while I was reading it. I know I need to skip a book if I'd rather do chores than actually read. Life is too short to read books you don't like.
October 2, 2009
Wow. This author is really blowing me away. I am reading about things that I don't even really care about because she weaves such a fascinating web. What I started out reading lackadaisically has become an obsession, and I'm only half way through.
December 12, 2011
I started this book because it was a book club pick. Almost immediately the crankiness began. Incredibly slow and disjointed. I finally admitted defeat at page 154. Not worth getting crankier at each page.
March 21, 2009
Choi is more of a plot writer and I typically prefer character development. The main character never really came to life for me in this one.
February 28, 2015
One of the best books I have ever read. Psychologically profound. I can not describe its effect on me.
October 30, 2016
Fact: every time it broke my heart yet again, I loved it in a different way.
December 17, 2019
Each scene is beautifully written but the overall plot seems to be less than compelling.
June 8, 2023
This book could have been 5 stars with different editing. It has a compelling story idea and some profound sentences, but the structure is off, both at the level of the novel and (in some cases) at the sentence level. It’s an uneven read. What could have been powerful material lays flat on the page early on because the sequence of events doesn’t allow us to understand what’s at stake until much later in the book. At the sentence level, odd constructions force you to go over certain passages more than once to understand.
The book shifts between the past and the present and multiple viewpoints and it seemed to me that the author may have had a screenplay in mind when she wrote it. Over-description of scenes and external (visual) things—that play no role in the story—take the place of writing about internal landscapes. I find this an odd choice for a novel, as the characters’ inner worlds seem underdeveloped. Rather than referring to the past, or just talking or thinking about it, she wrote entire chapters as flashback scenes. There are quick shifts between character perspectives that leave the feeling that a camera is cutting from one scene to the next. I think this technique works better for film than for books. As it stands, it is jarring and, though you could imagine the drama on screen, we can’t actually see the characters to convey their emotion, and the lack of writing about what they're feeling leaves a hole in the story. Novels do what no other medium can do as well: let us know the thoughts of characters. Here, instead, we get action, behavior, and setting, but little sense of their effects on the individuals in the story in terms of their wants, needs, growth, or change.
The principal characters are a male and female, Chang and Katherine, who meet though they are from different cultures and backgrounds and feel some sort of connection to each other that is never explained. Over the course of the book, it could be argued that Katherine changes as we see her make (somewhat) different decisions toward the end than she has made before in her life. But, without fully understanding what lies behind her pattern of decisions (the psychology of it) we don’t know if her choice is a break in an overarching pattern (a moment of growth), or if she simply makes a choice that looks different outwardly, but actually sticks to her pattern of decision-making. This is the problem with relying on behavior to explain internal states of characters. Some behaviors that seem different can manifest the same ends. We don’t know enough about her to read her behavior.
The male protagonist, Chang, doesn’t seem to have a specific desire. On the last page of the novel, it is expressed that he wanted to leave South Korea, to be free. But, we know from the first page of chapter 1 that this wish is fulfilled. So where is the conflict? How does his meeting Katherine fit into his arc? We know what her patterns are when it comes to relationships, but we don’t know his. Thus, we have no sense of why he’s drawn to her or what she means to him. He wanted to go to the US, and she is a US woman. Does she simply concretize his desire to integrate? The story loses power because the main relationship is unclear. And it’s unclear because we don’t know enough about what these two characters desire. Even in the case that their relationship is based on physical attraction (which is reason enough for me), that was not conveyed well.
One could argue, given that the story is about trauma (at least in Chang’s case), that his inner world is so flattened by what happened to him that perhaps he is not thinking or feeling anything. I could buy that this is why he has no expressed desires. Yet, the structure of the book doesn’t allow us to see his trauma until chapter 14 (one of the most captivating chapters, by the way). So we don't know if we aren’t seeing his inner world because he may be blocking it out until the book is almost over. While the prologue gives a glimpse of the circumstances surrounding the trauma, it is not dire enough to clue us into the reality of what happened. Further, the trauma argument does not function to explain Katherine’s lack of specific wants. Her past, which could have been portrayed as traumatic, was later incorporated into her story as a life choice (not an event that cuts her off from life).
There are other odd stylistic choices in the book. The jumps in time are messy and uneven. Some events or characters are posed, and then left not to be heard about again. To give an example, there is a long passage about Katherine’s first boyfriend. But after her ‘characterizing event’ occurs, her mother sends her to summer camp and we don’t know how the relationship ended with that first boyfriend. And then there is a time skip over her years at camp without any development in her relationship with her mother or with men. Does the segment on summer camp need to exist? Why detail this while leaving other threads loose or questions unanswered? It brings me back to the idea of a screenplay, where we would see some sort of montage of her growing up as the time skips ahead. I wanted to know how the characters got to where they are emotionally, not just what happened to them or what they did. What is their journey as human beings? Expectedly, traumatized characters withhold their emotions from the outside world, and possibly from themselves. But the question of ‘why’ (they act in certain ways) was largely missing for me. I would have liked for the characters to lay their truths on the table (in their minds), so the reader can recognize themselves in whatever shared humanity is there (shame, guilt, depression, bitterness, resentment, disgust—some sort of growth or change, or the express stunting of that growth or change).
This is told from a third person narrator, and I wonder if part of the problem lies there. There are some excellent and profound sentences in the book. We can see that the author/narrator is a philosophical thinker. But a third person narrator should allow us to feel the depths of more characters, not pull us away from the centers of the main characters. I think third person works here, but perhaps would have worked better if it simply alternated between ‘his’ perspective and ‘her’ perspective (or his past and her past). Instead, some chapters meander between these two perspectives (even within a given chapter) and some incorporate third parties (such as ch. 4, the telling of the start of the Korean war, which begins with the perspective of the American officer who is overseeing the Japanese surrender in Korea after WW2. This third-party perspective is then discontinued).
Lastly, the historical fiction aspect had some problems, not in the ‘present’ timeline (which is also our past), but in the characters’ pasts. The initial description of the Korean war seemed like something out of a Wikipedia page. By this I don’t mean that I question the author’s knowledge or familiarity with the topic, only the way the information was conveyed. I imagine it must be tough to educate your reader about an entire history and lay a backstory for readers who probably aren’t already familiar with it (this was written before “Google it” was a thing). But it was vague and stayed at the macro-level too much of the time, interpolating the main character into the structure, rather than having the context stem from the character’s individual story. However, the later chapters of the war (esp. ch. 14) are specific to the character and his journey, and the pacing in that chapter is also excellent. I got the impression that this was the piece the author really wanted to write, but felt she had to educate the reader in the earlier chapter. Unfortunately, the overarching history wasn’t incorporated well into the story she wanted to tell.
Having said all that, I like the idea for this book so much. If not, I would not have been able to write so much about what didn’t work for me, or how I think better editing could have improved it. There are moments when the author is able to get to an absolute truth. And those are the moments that I kept reading for. What falters in the exposition, is made up for in the action scenes. I appreciated how she wrote about sex and used realistic words to describe it, and that the characterization of sex and violence can be seen as synonymous through the graphic portrayal of bodies and acts against those bodies (even if the characters are complicit in the acts). Although the book is uneven, the intent and potential are evident and the glimpses of humanity and history are enough to carry the reader to the end.
The book shifts between the past and the present and multiple viewpoints and it seemed to me that the author may have had a screenplay in mind when she wrote it. Over-description of scenes and external (visual) things—that play no role in the story—take the place of writing about internal landscapes. I find this an odd choice for a novel, as the characters’ inner worlds seem underdeveloped. Rather than referring to the past, or just talking or thinking about it, she wrote entire chapters as flashback scenes. There are quick shifts between character perspectives that leave the feeling that a camera is cutting from one scene to the next. I think this technique works better for film than for books. As it stands, it is jarring and, though you could imagine the drama on screen, we can’t actually see the characters to convey their emotion, and the lack of writing about what they're feeling leaves a hole in the story. Novels do what no other medium can do as well: let us know the thoughts of characters. Here, instead, we get action, behavior, and setting, but little sense of their effects on the individuals in the story in terms of their wants, needs, growth, or change.
The principal characters are a male and female, Chang and Katherine, who meet though they are from different cultures and backgrounds and feel some sort of connection to each other that is never explained. Over the course of the book, it could be argued that Katherine changes as we see her make (somewhat) different decisions toward the end than she has made before in her life. But, without fully understanding what lies behind her pattern of decisions (the psychology of it) we don’t know if her choice is a break in an overarching pattern (a moment of growth), or if she simply makes a choice that looks different outwardly, but actually sticks to her pattern of decision-making. This is the problem with relying on behavior to explain internal states of characters. Some behaviors that seem different can manifest the same ends. We don’t know enough about her to read her behavior.
The male protagonist, Chang, doesn’t seem to have a specific desire. On the last page of the novel, it is expressed that he wanted to leave South Korea, to be free. But, we know from the first page of chapter 1 that this wish is fulfilled. So where is the conflict? How does his meeting Katherine fit into his arc? We know what her patterns are when it comes to relationships, but we don’t know his. Thus, we have no sense of why he’s drawn to her or what she means to him. He wanted to go to the US, and she is a US woman. Does she simply concretize his desire to integrate? The story loses power because the main relationship is unclear. And it’s unclear because we don’t know enough about what these two characters desire. Even in the case that their relationship is based on physical attraction (which is reason enough for me), that was not conveyed well.
One could argue, given that the story is about trauma (at least in Chang’s case), that his inner world is so flattened by what happened to him that perhaps he is not thinking or feeling anything. I could buy that this is why he has no expressed desires. Yet, the structure of the book doesn’t allow us to see his trauma until chapter 14 (one of the most captivating chapters, by the way). So we don't know if we aren’t seeing his inner world because he may be blocking it out until the book is almost over. While the prologue gives a glimpse of the circumstances surrounding the trauma, it is not dire enough to clue us into the reality of what happened. Further, the trauma argument does not function to explain Katherine’s lack of specific wants. Her past, which could have been portrayed as traumatic, was later incorporated into her story as a life choice (not an event that cuts her off from life).
There are other odd stylistic choices in the book. The jumps in time are messy and uneven. Some events or characters are posed, and then left not to be heard about again. To give an example, there is a long passage about Katherine’s first boyfriend. But after her ‘characterizing event’ occurs, her mother sends her to summer camp and we don’t know how the relationship ended with that first boyfriend. And then there is a time skip over her years at camp without any development in her relationship with her mother or with men. Does the segment on summer camp need to exist? Why detail this while leaving other threads loose or questions unanswered? It brings me back to the idea of a screenplay, where we would see some sort of montage of her growing up as the time skips ahead. I wanted to know how the characters got to where they are emotionally, not just what happened to them or what they did. What is their journey as human beings? Expectedly, traumatized characters withhold their emotions from the outside world, and possibly from themselves. But the question of ‘why’ (they act in certain ways) was largely missing for me. I would have liked for the characters to lay their truths on the table (in their minds), so the reader can recognize themselves in whatever shared humanity is there (shame, guilt, depression, bitterness, resentment, disgust—some sort of growth or change, or the express stunting of that growth or change).
This is told from a third person narrator, and I wonder if part of the problem lies there. There are some excellent and profound sentences in the book. We can see that the author/narrator is a philosophical thinker. But a third person narrator should allow us to feel the depths of more characters, not pull us away from the centers of the main characters. I think third person works here, but perhaps would have worked better if it simply alternated between ‘his’ perspective and ‘her’ perspective (or his past and her past). Instead, some chapters meander between these two perspectives (even within a given chapter) and some incorporate third parties (such as ch. 4, the telling of the start of the Korean war, which begins with the perspective of the American officer who is overseeing the Japanese surrender in Korea after WW2. This third-party perspective is then discontinued).
Lastly, the historical fiction aspect had some problems, not in the ‘present’ timeline (which is also our past), but in the characters’ pasts. The initial description of the Korean war seemed like something out of a Wikipedia page. By this I don’t mean that I question the author’s knowledge or familiarity with the topic, only the way the information was conveyed. I imagine it must be tough to educate your reader about an entire history and lay a backstory for readers who probably aren’t already familiar with it (this was written before “Google it” was a thing). But it was vague and stayed at the macro-level too much of the time, interpolating the main character into the structure, rather than having the context stem from the character’s individual story. However, the later chapters of the war (esp. ch. 14) are specific to the character and his journey, and the pacing in that chapter is also excellent. I got the impression that this was the piece the author really wanted to write, but felt she had to educate the reader in the earlier chapter. Unfortunately, the overarching history wasn’t incorporated well into the story she wanted to tell.
Having said all that, I like the idea for this book so much. If not, I would not have been able to write so much about what didn’t work for me, or how I think better editing could have improved it. There are moments when the author is able to get to an absolute truth. And those are the moments that I kept reading for. What falters in the exposition, is made up for in the action scenes. I appreciated how she wrote about sex and used realistic words to describe it, and that the characterization of sex and violence can be seen as synonymous through the graphic portrayal of bodies and acts against those bodies (even if the characters are complicit in the acts). Although the book is uneven, the intent and potential are evident and the glimpses of humanity and history are enough to carry the reader to the end.
June 24, 2024
În Studentul străin se intersectează două lumi cât se poate mai diferite, Coreea devastată de război și cultura respectabilă din Sewanee, Tennessee.
Actiunea se desfasoara pe doua planuri,
Chang e un tînăr coreean din Seul, care devine Chuck încă la el acasă fiindcă, ştiind engleza, pe care o învaţă de mic de la tatăl său , îi ajuta pe soldaţii americani cu traducerile, selecta şi traducea articole din ziarele americane pentru cele coreene, a lucrat în instituţiile americane din Seul, apoi i-a instruit şi din punct de vedere militar pe cei din armata coreeană, pentru a înţelege comenzile comandanţilor americani.
În 1955, Chang vine în SUA la studii, iar printre primii oameni pe care-i întîlneşte pe pămînt american e Katherine, o tînără cam de aceeaşi vîrstă, care-l duce cu maşina în campusul universităţii din Sewanee, Tennessee, unde urma să locuiască un an. Naraţiunea sare din prezent în trecut şi din SUA în Coreea de Sud (şi invers).
Astfel putem urmări cam toată istoria Coreei – cucerită mai întîi de japonezi, apoi eliberată, în timpul celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial, de americani şi sovietici, după care ţara a fost împărţită în două – Coreea de Sud şi Coreea de Nord, paralela 38 devenind graniţă, după care a urmat un război civil, cînd Coreea comunistă invadează şi distruge Coreea de Sud. Deşi i-a slujit exemplar şi fără nici o rezervă, după ce Seulul e eliberat şi se întoarce la muncă, americanii îi spun: „fără nici un gălbejit”. Au renunţat la el fără nici o urmă de regret, doar pentru că nu e american, apoi e luat de pe stradă şi schingiuit animalic de poliţia „democrată”, ca să „recunoască” că ar fi spion. Iar cînd s-a întors acasă, după acea perioadă de chinuri groaznice, mamă-sa l-a dat afară, crezînd că e un cerşetor
La universitatea din America toată lumea se poartă frumos cu Chuck, fiecare încearcă să-l ajute cu ce poate, să-l susţină, să-l facă să nu se simtă străin, iar profesorul Charles Addison, care predă un curs despre Shakespeare, pe care Chuck îl frecventa cu sfinţenie, s-a oferit să-l înveţe subtilităţile limbii engleze,
Despre Katherine aflăm că provine dintr-o familie înstărită, dar de care se înstrăinase. Părinţii erau foşti studenţi la Sewanee, unde au o vilă de vacanţă, iar taică-său era mare prieten cu profesorul Charles Addison, cu care se vizitează de mulţi ani. Şi aici cititorul descoperă în Katherine o Lolită rebelă, care, la 14 ani, deşi mamă-sa încearcă s-o lipească de un student care credea solemn în „sanctitatea educaţiei”, se combină cu prietenul tatălui ei, cu 28 de ani mai în vîrstă, cu care are o relaţie sexuală tumultuoasă .
Un roman cu multe poveşti de viaţă, de iubire, prietenie, despre diferenţele educaţionale, culturale şi sentimentale
Actiunea se desfasoara pe doua planuri,
Chang e un tînăr coreean din Seul, care devine Chuck încă la el acasă fiindcă, ştiind engleza, pe care o învaţă de mic de la tatăl său , îi ajuta pe soldaţii americani cu traducerile, selecta şi traducea articole din ziarele americane pentru cele coreene, a lucrat în instituţiile americane din Seul, apoi i-a instruit şi din punct de vedere militar pe cei din armata coreeană, pentru a înţelege comenzile comandanţilor americani.
În 1955, Chang vine în SUA la studii, iar printre primii oameni pe care-i întîlneşte pe pămînt american e Katherine, o tînără cam de aceeaşi vîrstă, care-l duce cu maşina în campusul universităţii din Sewanee, Tennessee, unde urma să locuiască un an. Naraţiunea sare din prezent în trecut şi din SUA în Coreea de Sud (şi invers).
Astfel putem urmări cam toată istoria Coreei – cucerită mai întîi de japonezi, apoi eliberată, în timpul celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial, de americani şi sovietici, după care ţara a fost împărţită în două – Coreea de Sud şi Coreea de Nord, paralela 38 devenind graniţă, după care a urmat un război civil, cînd Coreea comunistă invadează şi distruge Coreea de Sud. Deşi i-a slujit exemplar şi fără nici o rezervă, după ce Seulul e eliberat şi se întoarce la muncă, americanii îi spun: „fără nici un gălbejit”. Au renunţat la el fără nici o urmă de regret, doar pentru că nu e american, apoi e luat de pe stradă şi schingiuit animalic de poliţia „democrată”, ca să „recunoască” că ar fi spion. Iar cînd s-a întors acasă, după acea perioadă de chinuri groaznice, mamă-sa l-a dat afară, crezînd că e un cerşetor
La universitatea din America toată lumea se poartă frumos cu Chuck, fiecare încearcă să-l ajute cu ce poate, să-l susţină, să-l facă să nu se simtă străin, iar profesorul Charles Addison, care predă un curs despre Shakespeare, pe care Chuck îl frecventa cu sfinţenie, s-a oferit să-l înveţe subtilităţile limbii engleze,
Despre Katherine aflăm că provine dintr-o familie înstărită, dar de care se înstrăinase. Părinţii erau foşti studenţi la Sewanee, unde au o vilă de vacanţă, iar taică-său era mare prieten cu profesorul Charles Addison, cu care se vizitează de mulţi ani. Şi aici cititorul descoperă în Katherine o Lolită rebelă, care, la 14 ani, deşi mamă-sa încearcă s-o lipească de un student care credea solemn în „sanctitatea educaţiei”, se combină cu prietenul tatălui ei, cu 28 de ani mai în vîrstă, cu care are o relaţie sexuală tumultuoasă .
Un roman cu multe poveşti de viaţă, de iubire, prietenie, despre diferenţele educaţionale, culturale şi sentimentale
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 3, 2021
Book #2 in my 5-book streak of Asian authors
This was a miss for me. Susan Choi is obviously an accomplished writer - astonishingly so, in fact. It's hard to believe that this is her first book, and it's easy to see how she recently won the National Book Award. But this is not a great story, and the writing is pretentious. It's the kind of book that MFA writers turn out, and it's not my style.
For example, p. 274 -
"After seventy hours the bus - it was not the same bus, or the same driver, but it was, it was a segment of a vein of a system that embraced the world and to be inside the vein was to be all of it, an atom touching each part of the whole, like the oceans of the world, like the air - passed over the Lake Pontchartrain bridge and arrived in New Orleans."
It's just eye-rolling.
I skimmed quite a few pages, skipped whole sections, and didn't buy the relationships, not between Kim and Chang, and not between Chuck and Katherine, both of which drive the two timelines in this story, the Korean War and Chuck's arrival in Tennessee to attend college. I thought the Addison-Katherine storyline was difficult to read (and this from a person who very much enjoyed Tampa) and I didn't understand Katherine's motivations at all. I also had to suspend belief when Chang (Chuck) gets a job working for the Americans who preside over South Korea after WWII - at the ripe old age of 15. I just didn't buy any of it.
Choi may know how to write a sentence, but she couldn't get me to care. Everyone in this book felt like a caricature, which is often the case with oh-so-serious university-set books churned out by first-time novelists carrying MFA degrees.
This was a miss for me. Susan Choi is obviously an accomplished writer - astonishingly so, in fact. It's hard to believe that this is her first book, and it's easy to see how she recently won the National Book Award. But this is not a great story, and the writing is pretentious. It's the kind of book that MFA writers turn out, and it's not my style.
For example, p. 274 -
"After seventy hours the bus - it was not the same bus, or the same driver, but it was, it was a segment of a vein of a system that embraced the world and to be inside the vein was to be all of it, an atom touching each part of the whole, like the oceans of the world, like the air - passed over the Lake Pontchartrain bridge and arrived in New Orleans."
It's just eye-rolling.
I skimmed quite a few pages, skipped whole sections, and didn't buy the relationships, not between Kim and Chang, and not between Chuck and Katherine, both of which drive the two timelines in this story, the Korean War and Chuck's arrival in Tennessee to attend college. I thought the Addison-Katherine storyline was difficult to read (and this from a person who very much enjoyed Tampa) and I didn't understand Katherine's motivations at all. I also had to suspend belief when Chang (Chuck) gets a job working for the Americans who preside over South Korea after WWII - at the ripe old age of 15. I just didn't buy any of it.
Choi may know how to write a sentence, but she couldn't get me to care. Everyone in this book felt like a caricature, which is often the case with oh-so-serious university-set books churned out by first-time novelists carrying MFA degrees.
September 20, 2024
Goodreads reviewers are idiots.
I think her later books show more skill, especially in structure, but I'm still giving this 5 stars cause it feels right. In some books the flaws frustrate me, in this one they're just part of what makes it itself. Prickly and jagged and looking at the world sideways and in bursts, like both Catherine and Chang.
I wonder about the choice to make Chang's English name a diminutive of Charles. Other than their connection with Katherine there weren't any parallels between the characters that I could see, nor did it seem like there were supposed to be.
Choi is very good at evoking place.
I don't entirely understand the timeline, of what exactly happened to each character, either in Korea or the USA, but I kinda also feel like I don't need to. Some of the most important information was only revealed obliquely.
Anyways, idiot GR reviewers, this is not a Romance novel, neither Chang or Katherine are supposed to be likable, and I'm pretty confident it's intentional that we don't understand them until the end of the novel, and still not even then.
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https://www.washingtonsquarereview.co...
I think her later books show more skill, especially in structure, but I'm still giving this 5 stars cause it feels right. In some books the flaws frustrate me, in this one they're just part of what makes it itself. Prickly and jagged and looking at the world sideways and in bursts, like both Catherine and Chang.
I wonder about the choice to make Chang's English name a diminutive of Charles. Other than their connection with Katherine there weren't any parallels between the characters that I could see, nor did it seem like there were supposed to be.
Choi is very good at evoking place.
I don't entirely understand the timeline, of what exactly happened to each character, either in Korea or the USA, but I kinda also feel like I don't need to. Some of the most important information was only revealed obliquely.
Anyways, idiot GR reviewers, this is not a Romance novel, neither Chang or Katherine are supposed to be likable, and I'm pretty confident it's intentional that we don't understand them until the end of the novel, and still not even then.
---
https://www.washingtonsquarereview.co...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 12, 2018
This creative book by Susan Choi follows the life of a young Korean man to a high respected small college in the U.S. He faces many of the challenges that most foreign students face -- awkward gaps in where he can live over breaks, presentations to church groups about his country, unclear romantic relationships. Occasionally, the author moves readers back to his life in Korea, and those small windows give readers an even better understanding of the challenges of completing college studies in a completely different culture and using a completely different language. As someone who spent her life in colleges and universities, I could certainly recognize the challenges he faced. The book, however, was sometimes difficult for me to follow. More than once, I wished the author would name the person(s) in a new scene as it was difficult to know who "he" might be. All in all, this was not an easy book to read because of my difficulty following who was who, but it raises the key challenges and opportunities of the complications and opportunities of cross cultural education.
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