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A Person of Interest
With its propulsive drive, vividly realized characters, and profound observations about soul and society, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Susan Choi's latest novel is as thrilling as it is lyrical, and confirms her place as one of the most important novelists chronicling the American experience. Intricately plotted and psychologically acute, A Person of Interest exposes the fault lines of paranoia and dread that have fractured American life and asks how far one man must go to escape his regrets. Professor Lee, an Asian-born mathematician near retirement age would seem the last person to attract the attention of FBI agents. Yet after a colleague becomes the latest victim of a serial bomber, Lee must endure the undermining power of suspicion and face the ghosts of his past.
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 31, 2008
112 people are currently reading
2366 people want to read
About the author
Susan Choi
23 books1,026 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 284 reviews
July 1, 2025
"Perhaps love can't surrender to loss, but at least in that tireless rebellion, it recognizes itself".
Professor Choi has written one of the strangest and chilling novels I have read, I think this one even surpasses “American Woman". This is the story of the Chinese born Professor Lee, a lonely and alcoholic, but brilliant Mathematics professor who receives a mysterious letter whom he believes came from a former colleague.
Lee is haunted by his past- as he thinks about his deceased wife Aileen, who was once married to his friend Lewis Gaithner, a Evangelical Christian. The novel also centers on Gaithner's son, John, who has changed his name to Mark, who is at a loss after the dissolution of his parents' marriage.
The novel also focuses on Lee's forced relationship with his daughter, Esther, who spends time as an activist in California, and she sends Lee postcards as a way of maintaining contact.
As Lee is beginning to examine his past, a colleague named Professor Hendley is murdered by the notorious Brain Bomber- and suddenly because of his detached behavior, Lee finds himself a person of interest by the authorities.
In order to clear his name, Lee decides to hunt for the bomber himself in the snowy Idaho woods- in which he finds out was not the person he thought sent him the mysterious letter- but another colleague named Whitehead, angry at the world.
Like "American Woman" which is loosely based on the kidnapping of Patricia Hurst; this novel was inspired by the capture of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Professor Choi has a way of writing in gorgeously rendered sentences that are once simple in language, but complex in its characterization and actions.
The novel reads like a thriller, and is quite subtle and heartstopping once it reaches its climax, and the beautifully rendered finale.
Professor Choi has written one of the strangest and chilling novels I have read, I think this one even surpasses “American Woman". This is the story of the Chinese born Professor Lee, a lonely and alcoholic, but brilliant Mathematics professor who receives a mysterious letter whom he believes came from a former colleague.
Lee is haunted by his past- as he thinks about his deceased wife Aileen, who was once married to his friend Lewis Gaithner, a Evangelical Christian. The novel also centers on Gaithner's son, John, who has changed his name to Mark, who is at a loss after the dissolution of his parents' marriage.
The novel also focuses on Lee's forced relationship with his daughter, Esther, who spends time as an activist in California, and she sends Lee postcards as a way of maintaining contact.
As Lee is beginning to examine his past, a colleague named Professor Hendley is murdered by the notorious Brain Bomber- and suddenly because of his detached behavior, Lee finds himself a person of interest by the authorities.
In order to clear his name, Lee decides to hunt for the bomber himself in the snowy Idaho woods- in which he finds out was not the person he thought sent him the mysterious letter- but another colleague named Whitehead, angry at the world.
Like "American Woman" which is loosely based on the kidnapping of Patricia Hurst; this novel was inspired by the capture of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Professor Choi has a way of writing in gorgeously rendered sentences that are once simple in language, but complex in its characterization and actions.
The novel reads like a thriller, and is quite subtle and heartstopping once it reaches its climax, and the beautifully rendered finale.
March 15, 2008
For the day and a half or so that I spent reading this book last weekend, very little got done in my home. When I finally finished it on Sunday evening, all the subtle indicators of a misspent weekend were evident - dirty dishes in the sink, heaps of dirty laundry, piles of assorted tax-related documents still needing to be corraled into some semblance of order, and two less than gruntled kitties, whose reproaches were getting progressively more vocal. Having written that, I realise that saying a book is more interesting than household chores might be considered damning it with faint praise, so let me clarify - that's not what I mean - this book is engrossing, and you may find it an irresistible time-sink.
It's been widely, and generally favorably, reviewed. I think the praise is well-deserved. Susan Choi writes beautifully, and was remarkably effective in making me care about Professor Lee, the central character, despite his many flaws and almost total lack of empathy. The basic plot outline - Lee comes under suspicion in the investigation of the death of a colleague who died following a Unabomber-style attack - is sketched in most reviews of the book, so I won't dwell on it here. The plot is not really the book's strong point - it is a little haphazard, with some aspects that don't seem completely plausible. But that hardly matters, it really just serves to provide the framework for Choi's in-depth, fascinating, and completely convincing character study of her flawed protagonist.
In the novel, Lee is a math professor; I spent four years of graduate school studying mathematical statistics. At certain points in the book I would find myself thinking - "she's exaggerating - nobody could be that lacking in empathy". But then, I'd do a mental rundown of my own class roster, and come up with at least two or three characters who were even weirder. Graduate study in the mathematical sciences does not, after all, tend to attract the raving extroverts of this world. So I think that Choi does get her character essentially right; her father being a math professor was presumably of some help in this regard.
A final note: the book is highly reminiscent of Heinrich Böll's 1974 novel, "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum", adapted for film in 1975 by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta (and later as a 1984 made for TV movie in the U.S., starring Marlo Thomas and Kris Kristofferson). Both books focus on a central character whose natural reserve and desire for privacy result in demonization and suspicion by the press and the authorities. I had a summer job in Berlin in 1975, and there was much lively debate about Böll's book and the film adaptation. One can only dream of a similarly engaged debate in the U.S.; Choi's book should at least provoke readers to think about the questions involved.
I highly recommend "A Person of Interest".
It's been widely, and generally favorably, reviewed. I think the praise is well-deserved. Susan Choi writes beautifully, and was remarkably effective in making me care about Professor Lee, the central character, despite his many flaws and almost total lack of empathy. The basic plot outline - Lee comes under suspicion in the investigation of the death of a colleague who died following a Unabomber-style attack - is sketched in most reviews of the book, so I won't dwell on it here. The plot is not really the book's strong point - it is a little haphazard, with some aspects that don't seem completely plausible. But that hardly matters, it really just serves to provide the framework for Choi's in-depth, fascinating, and completely convincing character study of her flawed protagonist.
In the novel, Lee is a math professor; I spent four years of graduate school studying mathematical statistics. At certain points in the book I would find myself thinking - "she's exaggerating - nobody could be that lacking in empathy". But then, I'd do a mental rundown of my own class roster, and come up with at least two or three characters who were even weirder. Graduate study in the mathematical sciences does not, after all, tend to attract the raving extroverts of this world. So I think that Choi does get her character essentially right; her father being a math professor was presumably of some help in this regard.
A final note: the book is highly reminiscent of Heinrich Böll's 1974 novel, "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum", adapted for film in 1975 by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta (and later as a 1984 made for TV movie in the U.S., starring Marlo Thomas and Kris Kristofferson). Both books focus on a central character whose natural reserve and desire for privacy result in demonization and suspicion by the press and the authorities. I had a summer job in Berlin in 1975, and there was much lively debate about Böll's book and the film adaptation. One can only dream of a similarly engaged debate in the U.S.; Choi's book should at least provoke readers to think about the questions involved.
I highly recommend "A Person of Interest".
March 19, 2009
this is jhumpa lahiri meets zadie smith (look what you've done, jhumpa and zadie! turned a whole generation of women novelists to your stark, in the former case, and bleakly humorous, in the latter, demolition of the multiple barriers the human psyche erects to keep itself looking normal) meets dostoevsky. seriously. what a tour de force. susan choi takes the concept of "scene" so seriously that her scenes turn into long long chapters, even when all she describes is a trip from home to campus. the scope is definitely 19th century. this is writing that leaves no stone unturned in its analysis of the movements of the human heart (george eliot? flaubert?). but there is also a nabokovian pleasure in delving into perversity and pettiness. except that, since this delving is from the point of view of the close-third-person protagonist, these agonies of disclosure are stained and rotted by self-doubt, self-contempt, and a feverish, pathological loneliness. lee is the most tortured person i've ever met, either in real life or in fiction.
at the same time (enter zadie and jhumpa) there are all the hallmarks of post-post-modernity in this novel: immigration, cultural impasses, the horrors of academia, the ungraspability of the constructed self, technology, and, of course, terrorism (the novel starts with and centers on a bombing).
i'm just at the 100 page mark. this is not fast going. but wow, susan choi, how could you write this and sleep at night?
****
now the story is picking up -- lee is a suspect in the bombing -- and while this makes for faster reading, you feel that something is lost (not a bad thing, just a regular loss, one of the losses one gets all the time, every day: hours passing, meals ending, goodbye, goodbye). it was really crazy to see lee at his purest, most solipsistic tortured. now he's got something to be tortured about, and the reader's puzzlement, her... anger? starts being directed elsewhere, i.e. at those brutish FBI people. lee becomes the victim, which makes him likable. sea change!
****
wow. i just finished this extraordinary book. more on overall impressions tomorrow. it's a masterpiece. i'm surprised it didn't get nominated for any of those awards they are always so eager to give women of color (no slight in the least bit intended -- choi would totally deserve at least a nomination). what a book. i'm reeling.
****
what an accomplishment. i don't understand why we don't hear about susan choi at least as much as we hear about jhumpa lahiri. the protagonist of this book, lee, is a late-middle-aged asian man, a math professor in an unnamed mid-western college. and already things get strange, because lee's original country, which he left in his late twenties and which was at the time occupied by a repressive communist regime, is never named either. and the time frame doesn't quite work (or at least it didn't for me). like: his next-door colleague, the guy who gets bombed in the first line of the book, is a computer scientist working with dial-up. in fact, he's a pioneer in computer science. so, this is the very beginning of this book, and you read the words "dial-up:" what do you do? you locate yourself immediately in the nineties. but then the FBI shows up, and they have snap phones. did we have snap phones in the 90s? i don't think so. so you readjust your focus, but also keep your eyes peeled for clues. and suddenly you have cassette tapes...
etc.
to be sure, choi gives a million time-clues. in fact, she tells us at what approximate age lee graduated from grad school, and what year that was. but i found myself doing the math over and over, and bad as i am at basic arithmetic, i don't typically find myself counting so much in a book. oh wait, it's a book about mathematicians! is that why choi makes us count so much?
same goes with space. once lee leaves his little town, the geographical markers are awfully precise, down to interstate turns. but it's as if his town and state, much like his time, were sunk in fog, slightly off, slightly murky, slightly out of sync with the rest of reality (the reader's reality).
and this is such a great quality of this book, because it makes it vague and mysterious and, also, makes you pay attention. and pay attention is the thing you must do most when you read this book.
which brings me to the what's-this-about question. this book changes aboutness every 100 pages or so. ultimately, i think, it's about love and family, spouses, children, but probably someone else would find the aboutness to be different. these issues are the ones that talked to me. the invisible children that live (more and more noticeably) just under the surface of this novel are its center, and the crotchety and failed fatherhood of lee the very heart of this amazing novel.
it's lovely that the protagonist should be an east-asian guy living in the midwest. even though he is hardly ever described in terms of otherness, you, if you are like me, i.e. a white reader, herself an immigrant, have his otherness imprinted on the inside of your cornea at all times. this is vastly helped by the fact that choi dwells SO MUCH on his physicality -- his clothes, his thinness, his age, his scrawny body, his smallness, the fatigue lines on his face, etc. every time she does that, you are forced to see his asian face. and, if you are like me, what you see is a kind of inscrutability (which is racist, but then this book is also about making us question our subtle racism) because you know that's what lee's fellow midwesterners see, and what you'd see if you were one of them.
and this is certainly not aided by the fact that, in the book, lee is almost always tongue-tied, paralyzed, terrified, blundering, and horribly self-conscious. also, he makes a point of disdaining the most basic social conventions, and seems entirely out of tune with everyone else, as if he were so shy and misanthropic and self-conscious that he didn't have one thought to spare for anyone but his own agonizing self.
so it comes as a surprise when choi goes into flashback mode and you discover than a younger lee was, if not more sociable, capable of passion and, even more surprising, of terrifying outbursts of rage.
and this is another lesson of this book: that we don't know each other. we don't know each other's motivations, desires, inner selves, potentialities, and future actions. we can't predict. the only thing we can do is talk, and connect, and try to find out.
choi writes amazing prose. i can't wait to read her other books. she's a master.
at the same time (enter zadie and jhumpa) there are all the hallmarks of post-post-modernity in this novel: immigration, cultural impasses, the horrors of academia, the ungraspability of the constructed self, technology, and, of course, terrorism (the novel starts with and centers on a bombing).
i'm just at the 100 page mark. this is not fast going. but wow, susan choi, how could you write this and sleep at night?
****
now the story is picking up -- lee is a suspect in the bombing -- and while this makes for faster reading, you feel that something is lost (not a bad thing, just a regular loss, one of the losses one gets all the time, every day: hours passing, meals ending, goodbye, goodbye). it was really crazy to see lee at his purest, most solipsistic tortured. now he's got something to be tortured about, and the reader's puzzlement, her... anger? starts being directed elsewhere, i.e. at those brutish FBI people. lee becomes the victim, which makes him likable. sea change!
****
wow. i just finished this extraordinary book. more on overall impressions tomorrow. it's a masterpiece. i'm surprised it didn't get nominated for any of those awards they are always so eager to give women of color (no slight in the least bit intended -- choi would totally deserve at least a nomination). what a book. i'm reeling.
****
what an accomplishment. i don't understand why we don't hear about susan choi at least as much as we hear about jhumpa lahiri. the protagonist of this book, lee, is a late-middle-aged asian man, a math professor in an unnamed mid-western college. and already things get strange, because lee's original country, which he left in his late twenties and which was at the time occupied by a repressive communist regime, is never named either. and the time frame doesn't quite work (or at least it didn't for me). like: his next-door colleague, the guy who gets bombed in the first line of the book, is a computer scientist working with dial-up. in fact, he's a pioneer in computer science. so, this is the very beginning of this book, and you read the words "dial-up:" what do you do? you locate yourself immediately in the nineties. but then the FBI shows up, and they have snap phones. did we have snap phones in the 90s? i don't think so. so you readjust your focus, but also keep your eyes peeled for clues. and suddenly you have cassette tapes...
etc.
to be sure, choi gives a million time-clues. in fact, she tells us at what approximate age lee graduated from grad school, and what year that was. but i found myself doing the math over and over, and bad as i am at basic arithmetic, i don't typically find myself counting so much in a book. oh wait, it's a book about mathematicians! is that why choi makes us count so much?
same goes with space. once lee leaves his little town, the geographical markers are awfully precise, down to interstate turns. but it's as if his town and state, much like his time, were sunk in fog, slightly off, slightly murky, slightly out of sync with the rest of reality (the reader's reality).
and this is such a great quality of this book, because it makes it vague and mysterious and, also, makes you pay attention. and pay attention is the thing you must do most when you read this book.
which brings me to the what's-this-about question. this book changes aboutness every 100 pages or so. ultimately, i think, it's about love and family, spouses, children, but probably someone else would find the aboutness to be different. these issues are the ones that talked to me. the invisible children that live (more and more noticeably) just under the surface of this novel are its center, and the crotchety and failed fatherhood of lee the very heart of this amazing novel.
it's lovely that the protagonist should be an east-asian guy living in the midwest. even though he is hardly ever described in terms of otherness, you, if you are like me, i.e. a white reader, herself an immigrant, have his otherness imprinted on the inside of your cornea at all times. this is vastly helped by the fact that choi dwells SO MUCH on his physicality -- his clothes, his thinness, his age, his scrawny body, his smallness, the fatigue lines on his face, etc. every time she does that, you are forced to see his asian face. and, if you are like me, what you see is a kind of inscrutability (which is racist, but then this book is also about making us question our subtle racism) because you know that's what lee's fellow midwesterners see, and what you'd see if you were one of them.
and this is certainly not aided by the fact that, in the book, lee is almost always tongue-tied, paralyzed, terrified, blundering, and horribly self-conscious. also, he makes a point of disdaining the most basic social conventions, and seems entirely out of tune with everyone else, as if he were so shy and misanthropic and self-conscious that he didn't have one thought to spare for anyone but his own agonizing self.
so it comes as a surprise when choi goes into flashback mode and you discover than a younger lee was, if not more sociable, capable of passion and, even more surprising, of terrifying outbursts of rage.
and this is another lesson of this book: that we don't know each other. we don't know each other's motivations, desires, inner selves, potentialities, and future actions. we can't predict. the only thing we can do is talk, and connect, and try to find out.
choi writes amazing prose. i can't wait to read her other books. she's a master.
December 30, 2008
I got to page 133 out of 356. At this point I know that the story centers on a man of unknown oriental ancestry who is very uncomfortable with every aspect of his life. I knew that within a few pages of beginning. This is demonstrated in the present, recalled in the past and thought of when other characters have the first person floor. There does not appear to be a plot and there has been no action or progress toward any action. I did not find any foreshadowing that there would be any change for the better or the worse in the personality of the main character. I did not feel that he was gaining any insight into himself or his place in the world.
Couldn't get to the library so I read on to page 220. Something finally happens or begins to happen around page 135. It is still a slow go and I have no incentive to continue grinding through it.
Couldn't get to the library so I read on to page 220. Something finally happens or begins to happen around page 135. It is still a slow go and I have no incentive to continue grinding through it.
January 31, 2023
A strong 5 stars. One of my favorite authors. Most highly recommended.
November 28, 2013
Susan Choi looks for essential American characters in the most peculiar places. Five years ago, she wrote a novel about Patty Hearst called American Woman that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and now she's back with A Person of Interest, a piercing story about the Unabomber that's one of the most remarkable novels to have emerged from our age of terror. American Woman followed the Hearst case closely, but Choi's success this time has nothing to do with fidelity to the historical record; indeed, the anti-technology assassin, Ted Kaczynski, and the criminal investigation to stop him comprise only a small, late part of this novel. Instead, what makes A Person of Interest so brilliant and unsettling is Choi's creation of an old man who becomes an object of suspicion.
Twice divorced, friendless, the man known only as Dr. Lee is an embittered math professor at a mediocre university somewhere in the Midwest. He seems no more endearing than Emma Bovary or Humbert Humbert, but he's just as mesmerizing. In his youth, he emigrated from a repressive Asian country (never specified), and now with his slightly odd, distinctly unfriendly demeanor, he scratches at the xenophobia lying beneath our liberal sensibilities. But in the depths of Lee's peculiar foreignness, Choi touches something universal and raw and irresistibly sympathetic. Her merciless knowledge of him, her sardonic analysis of his anxiety, his shame and his compulsive jealousy result in a cringe-inducing performance, a tour de force that would cause Flaubert to cry out, "Dr. Lee, c'est moi!"
The novel opens with an explosion in the office next to Lee that's so powerful it knocks him off his chair. As he sits crumpled on the floor waiting for paramedics to arrive, he knows it must have been a package bomb. "The explosion had not breached the wall," Choi writes. "The work it had wrought on the far side was left for Lee to imagine, as he felt the force wash over him, felt his heart quail, and felt himself briefly thinking, Oh, good."
The incinerated victim next door is Dr. Hendley, a young hot-shot computer scientist, "an exemplar of a new breed of professor, worldly, engaged, more likely to publish in a magazine full of ads for a mysterious item called PlayStation than in a moribund university quarterly, read only by the frail, graying men (and rare woman) whose work was included that month." Lee has always found Hendley's popularity -- with the students, other faculty members, even the world at large -- annoying, but until the explosion, he'd never realized the intensity of his hatred. Lee "was deep in disgusted reflection on his own pettiness when the bomb squad found him, but, unsurprisingly, they had assumed he was simply in shock."
So begins a story of ever increasing self-consciousness and self-loathing. Step by step, Choi follows Lee through the horrible days after the bombing in a narrative voice that manages to channel his bile while also satirizing it with blistering commentary. At the hospital where reporters are waiting for word of Hendley's condition, Lee delivers a rousing condemnation of the attack, but he finds the media glare and his colleagues' sympathy deeply irritating. Among other things, he's infuriated by the realization that he's not important enough to merit assassination.
Conflicted and disturbed by his own pettiness, he avoids the grief counselors, the public expressions of remorse, the lachrymose well-wishers, but his remoteness only makes him seem more peculiar, then suspicious. Try as he might -- "in a furnace of fury and shame" -- he just can't behave in the way he knows people want him to. "His perpetual crime," Choi writes, "was the failure to keep up appearances."
In the middle of this ordeal, he receives a taunting letter from an old acquaintance named Gaither, an evangelical Christian he hasn't seen since they were graduate students together. At this point, Choi breaks the story along two different timelines: The letter draws Lee's mind back to those early years in America and his broken friendship with Gaither. The more he ruminates on their hurt feelings, the more convinced he becomes that his old friend is the assassin and that the bomb Hendley opened was, in fact, intended for him. In the claustrophobic atmosphere of Lee's paranoia, it's a conclusion he finds at once terrifying and flattering. (Choi recently told a reporter that her own father, also a mathematician, went to graduate shool with Ted Kaczynski in the '60s.)
Meanwhile, Lee's increasingly nervous behavior attracts the attention of the FBI, which considers him "a person of interest." Of course, that added scrutiny, magnified by his neighbors' eagerness to ostracize him (or worse), only exaggerates his peculiarity. (Readers may be reminded of the devastating investigation of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.) Choi notes coolly that Lee suffers from "the immigrant's sense of hopeless illegitimacy and impending exposure." But I don't care if your family came over on the Mayflower -- only the most pathologically overconfident person could read these flawless scenes without resonating to Lee's anxiety.
Amid the increasingly aggressive FBI investigation, some of the long flashbacks to Lee's graduate school years and his failed marriages feel like unneeded detours, but ultimately the two story lines play off each other in the most fascinating ways. The sweaty pace of the contemporary thriller complements the quiet tragedy of the older, domestic drama, and through it all runs Choi's scathing, illuminating scrutiny.
The novel's concluding scenes mark a surprising, not entirely successful shift. The plot, so careful and precise up to this point, grows oddly rushed and surreal: The climax passes in an unlikely, blurry scene. What's more strange, though, is the tempering of Choi's tone. Her mordant voice falls away, and for the remaining pages Lee is described by a gentle, even sentimental narrator whose voice is difficult to square with the bulk of the novel's steely wit. Perhaps Choi is merely showing a little mercy after holding her antihero on the end of a pin for so many pages, but it seems like a failure of nerve or the intervention of those Hollywood bosses who order up endings in response to preview questionnaires. No matter -- something to argue about with the book club. Choi remains, more than ever, a writer of interest.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
Twice divorced, friendless, the man known only as Dr. Lee is an embittered math professor at a mediocre university somewhere in the Midwest. He seems no more endearing than Emma Bovary or Humbert Humbert, but he's just as mesmerizing. In his youth, he emigrated from a repressive Asian country (never specified), and now with his slightly odd, distinctly unfriendly demeanor, he scratches at the xenophobia lying beneath our liberal sensibilities. But in the depths of Lee's peculiar foreignness, Choi touches something universal and raw and irresistibly sympathetic. Her merciless knowledge of him, her sardonic analysis of his anxiety, his shame and his compulsive jealousy result in a cringe-inducing performance, a tour de force that would cause Flaubert to cry out, "Dr. Lee, c'est moi!"
The novel opens with an explosion in the office next to Lee that's so powerful it knocks him off his chair. As he sits crumpled on the floor waiting for paramedics to arrive, he knows it must have been a package bomb. "The explosion had not breached the wall," Choi writes. "The work it had wrought on the far side was left for Lee to imagine, as he felt the force wash over him, felt his heart quail, and felt himself briefly thinking, Oh, good."
The incinerated victim next door is Dr. Hendley, a young hot-shot computer scientist, "an exemplar of a new breed of professor, worldly, engaged, more likely to publish in a magazine full of ads for a mysterious item called PlayStation than in a moribund university quarterly, read only by the frail, graying men (and rare woman) whose work was included that month." Lee has always found Hendley's popularity -- with the students, other faculty members, even the world at large -- annoying, but until the explosion, he'd never realized the intensity of his hatred. Lee "was deep in disgusted reflection on his own pettiness when the bomb squad found him, but, unsurprisingly, they had assumed he was simply in shock."
So begins a story of ever increasing self-consciousness and self-loathing. Step by step, Choi follows Lee through the horrible days after the bombing in a narrative voice that manages to channel his bile while also satirizing it with blistering commentary. At the hospital where reporters are waiting for word of Hendley's condition, Lee delivers a rousing condemnation of the attack, but he finds the media glare and his colleagues' sympathy deeply irritating. Among other things, he's infuriated by the realization that he's not important enough to merit assassination.
Conflicted and disturbed by his own pettiness, he avoids the grief counselors, the public expressions of remorse, the lachrymose well-wishers, but his remoteness only makes him seem more peculiar, then suspicious. Try as he might -- "in a furnace of fury and shame" -- he just can't behave in the way he knows people want him to. "His perpetual crime," Choi writes, "was the failure to keep up appearances."
In the middle of this ordeal, he receives a taunting letter from an old acquaintance named Gaither, an evangelical Christian he hasn't seen since they were graduate students together. At this point, Choi breaks the story along two different timelines: The letter draws Lee's mind back to those early years in America and his broken friendship with Gaither. The more he ruminates on their hurt feelings, the more convinced he becomes that his old friend is the assassin and that the bomb Hendley opened was, in fact, intended for him. In the claustrophobic atmosphere of Lee's paranoia, it's a conclusion he finds at once terrifying and flattering. (Choi recently told a reporter that her own father, also a mathematician, went to graduate shool with Ted Kaczynski in the '60s.)
Meanwhile, Lee's increasingly nervous behavior attracts the attention of the FBI, which considers him "a person of interest." Of course, that added scrutiny, magnified by his neighbors' eagerness to ostracize him (or worse), only exaggerates his peculiarity. (Readers may be reminded of the devastating investigation of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.) Choi notes coolly that Lee suffers from "the immigrant's sense of hopeless illegitimacy and impending exposure." But I don't care if your family came over on the Mayflower -- only the most pathologically overconfident person could read these flawless scenes without resonating to Lee's anxiety.
Amid the increasingly aggressive FBI investigation, some of the long flashbacks to Lee's graduate school years and his failed marriages feel like unneeded detours, but ultimately the two story lines play off each other in the most fascinating ways. The sweaty pace of the contemporary thriller complements the quiet tragedy of the older, domestic drama, and through it all runs Choi's scathing, illuminating scrutiny.
The novel's concluding scenes mark a surprising, not entirely successful shift. The plot, so careful and precise up to this point, grows oddly rushed and surreal: The climax passes in an unlikely, blurry scene. What's more strange, though, is the tempering of Choi's tone. Her mordant voice falls away, and for the remaining pages Lee is described by a gentle, even sentimental narrator whose voice is difficult to square with the bulk of the novel's steely wit. Perhaps Choi is merely showing a little mercy after holding her antihero on the end of a pin for so many pages, but it seems like a failure of nerve or the intervention of those Hollywood bosses who order up endings in response to preview questionnaires. No matter -- something to argue about with the book club. Choi remains, more than ever, a writer of interest.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
December 21, 2020
I've made a concerted effort, twice, to read this. I found the characters so unlikeable and the pace so slow that I just couldn't make it past the 1/3 point. Choi seems to be a skilled enough writer that these were deliberate choices on her part, but this was a reader/story mismatch.
May 9, 2019
I very nearly gave up on this book after hearing far too much about two selfish, horrible men. I’m glad I stuck with it.
Professor Lee is a not Chinese, but Asian. He escapes his home country alone, his family lost. He starts over in America at age 29, and enters graduate school (mathematics) at the University of Iowa.
The story picks up with a fictionalized Unabomber killing his rising star colleague, whom he’s had several very public disagreements with, though they don’t seem to have registered with him. Lee becomes convinced that the bombing is related to him, and manages to become a person of interest in the case.
But that said, this book is much more about the wide gulf between how we see ourselves and how others see us. Lee is twice divorced but still incredibly in love with his first wife, whom he took for granted right up until she died young.
As the investigation into the bombing continues, Lee examines his behavior in his first marriage and seems to still miss the fact that he was an atrocious prick to his first wife when she fought for custody of her child.
I won’t give away the ending but I will say that I did call it but would have been furious if it hadn’t been resolved in the way it was.
This book will stay with me for a long, long time. The main character learned his lessons late in life, providing plenty of examples for the rest of us why the connections we make in life sustain us.
Professor Lee is a not Chinese, but Asian. He escapes his home country alone, his family lost. He starts over in America at age 29, and enters graduate school (mathematics) at the University of Iowa.
The story picks up with a fictionalized Unabomber killing his rising star colleague, whom he’s had several very public disagreements with, though they don’t seem to have registered with him. Lee becomes convinced that the bombing is related to him, and manages to become a person of interest in the case.
But that said, this book is much more about the wide gulf between how we see ourselves and how others see us. Lee is twice divorced but still incredibly in love with his first wife, whom he took for granted right up until she died young.
As the investigation into the bombing continues, Lee examines his behavior in his first marriage and seems to still miss the fact that he was an atrocious prick to his first wife when she fought for custody of her child.
I won’t give away the ending but I will say that I did call it but would have been furious if it hadn’t been resolved in the way it was.
This book will stay with me for a long, long time. The main character learned his lessons late in life, providing plenty of examples for the rest of us why the connections we make in life sustain us.
April 23, 2010
Midway through this novel, I abandoned it because it was a difficult read, and I wasn't able to properly concentrate due to personal issues. However, I picked it up again two reads later, and I enjoyed it.
It's extremely well written with complicated relationships; it has an intricate plot; and it will challenge your knowledge of vocabulary, for sure.
When a bombing at a college campus kills a charismatic, popular computer science professor, an older math colleague is implicated and becomes a person of interest to the FBI, to the press, and to his neighbors and the college community. Having initially lied to the FBI about letters he received from a person from his past in an attempt to protect his privacy, every aspect of Lee's life becomes suspect and is examined. Though Lee is not the "brain bomber," the question of guilt and the invasion of one's privacy moves the plot.
Good read.
Maria, I think you would enjoy this well-crafted novel.
It's extremely well written with complicated relationships; it has an intricate plot; and it will challenge your knowledge of vocabulary, for sure.
When a bombing at a college campus kills a charismatic, popular computer science professor, an older math colleague is implicated and becomes a person of interest to the FBI, to the press, and to his neighbors and the college community. Having initially lied to the FBI about letters he received from a person from his past in an attempt to protect his privacy, every aspect of Lee's life becomes suspect and is examined. Though Lee is not the "brain bomber," the question of guilt and the invasion of one's privacy moves the plot.
Good read.
Maria, I think you would enjoy this well-crafted novel.
March 6, 2008
The author was recommended by/a friend of a wonderful college professor from Dublin.
reminded me of Love In the Time of Cholera in its long passages of scenery description and grace notes of inconsequentialities. a story of a man's isolation and ruptured american dream but the main plot was a bit sensational, although reflective of the news stories of campus disruptions. he looks back on a life where he missed all these opportunities with people significant to him.
reminded me of Love In the Time of Cholera in its long passages of scenery description and grace notes of inconsequentialities. a story of a man's isolation and ruptured american dream but the main plot was a bit sensational, although reflective of the news stories of campus disruptions. he looks back on a life where he missed all these opportunities with people significant to him.
February 2, 2020
I like the story line. The author has a strong story with a good ending. However, I wasn't able to hang onto in the beginning, I can't say why.
I decided to continue despite some attempts of giving it up. I wanted to know if one of the characters was still alive that held me to the very end.
Somehow, towards the last 5 chapters , I got excited and I continued reading. The pace was good, the author was crafty in that she released the suspense slowly, reeling in the excitement for me to follow.
The author seems to set her novels in the field of education which I am totally unfamiliar with
Overall, it is a good read.
I decided to continue despite some attempts of giving it up. I wanted to know if one of the characters was still alive that held me to the very end.
Somehow, towards the last 5 chapters , I got excited and I continued reading. The pace was good, the author was crafty in that she released the suspense slowly, reeling in the excitement for me to follow.
The author seems to set her novels in the field of education which I am totally unfamiliar with
Overall, it is a good read.
October 19, 2018
Synopsis: It was a day the mail had been delivered. Lee knew this because he knew that Hendley was alone in his office. The door was shut tight, just as it always is when Hendley opens his mail, and only when Hendley opens his mail. Lee knew it had to have been mail that was delivered that day because he knew that Hendley began to open mail from the most recently delivered and then proceeded backward. When Lee felt the bomb go off in the office next to his, the office that belonged to Hendley, he wasn't surprised by the force of the explosion, but instead thrown into a state of shock by his realization of his dislike for Hendley and how he felt glad that Hendley had been damaged. As Lee becomes entangled in the bombing of Hendley's office, his response to the attack being broadcasted on national news, ghosts of his past are unearthed and he comes into contact with figures from his days as a graduate student. When he receives a threatening letter in the mail soon after the bombing as his guilt for his reaction towards Hendley's assault increasingly spirals into an anxious panic, he hurls himself into a self-created torment produced by his own concoction of defensive self-pride, sheepishness, awkwardness, and repressed insecurity. To make matters worse, his behavior causes Lee to find himself under not only the suspicion of his acquaintances and the community but also the scrutinizing gaze of the FBI investigation led by Agent Jim Morrison.
Opinion: While reading the book, I found myself oscillating between being engrossed in the text and drowning in desperation for the book to just end. At times, Lee's spiraling paranoia-filled thoughts were thrilling and overwhelming, as if I was being engulfed by his anxiety. However, his lack of social tact and general human decency was consistently off-putting to the point of being pitiful and almost pathetic. It was interesting to have such an unlikable character being subjected to intense suspicion and scrutiny with all the insecurities and failings of his life being unraveled, only to ultimately have in the end a redemption of sorts for his shortcomings and a triumphant resolution to the book. While the details of the character were interesting, the book was, more often than not, a chore to drudge through with its long-winded and overly rambling explanatory descriptions, a quality I found to be extremely counter-intuitive to a thriller story and disappointing in its failure to sustain the anxious, tight-wired tension that laced these moments.
Appeals: Reflecting on the reviews already posted on Goodreads, it seems that opinions on this book are quite divided. The storyline is entirely character-driven, as it is clear from the beginning that the main protagonist, Lee, is innocent of the crime. The writing is consistently dense throughout the book, with dialogue occurring in only brief and infrequent moments. While written from the perspective of a third-person point of view by an omniscient narrator, the narration is depictive of Lee's anxiety and panic, written in an immensely dense manner to emulate the overwhelming bombardment of his thoughts. There are moments of high tension and anxiety that are characteristic of a plotline as thrilling as one about a bombing. Yet, these moments are almost entirely unrelated to the actual solving of the crime and are often overshadowed by the deep explorations into Lee's character and history as a flawed human being. Details of the environment and the characters are amply provided to the point of being overwhelming, yet are successful in completely immersing the reader into the moment and into the characters' frame of thought. This would not be a book to recommend to those desiring a conventional thriller novel, but possibly those interested in more psychologically thrilling or scathingly introspective books.
Opinion: While reading the book, I found myself oscillating between being engrossed in the text and drowning in desperation for the book to just end. At times, Lee's spiraling paranoia-filled thoughts were thrilling and overwhelming, as if I was being engulfed by his anxiety. However, his lack of social tact and general human decency was consistently off-putting to the point of being pitiful and almost pathetic. It was interesting to have such an unlikable character being subjected to intense suspicion and scrutiny with all the insecurities and failings of his life being unraveled, only to ultimately have in the end a redemption of sorts for his shortcomings and a triumphant resolution to the book. While the details of the character were interesting, the book was, more often than not, a chore to drudge through with its long-winded and overly rambling explanatory descriptions, a quality I found to be extremely counter-intuitive to a thriller story and disappointing in its failure to sustain the anxious, tight-wired tension that laced these moments.
Appeals: Reflecting on the reviews already posted on Goodreads, it seems that opinions on this book are quite divided. The storyline is entirely character-driven, as it is clear from the beginning that the main protagonist, Lee, is innocent of the crime. The writing is consistently dense throughout the book, with dialogue occurring in only brief and infrequent moments. While written from the perspective of a third-person point of view by an omniscient narrator, the narration is depictive of Lee's anxiety and panic, written in an immensely dense manner to emulate the overwhelming bombardment of his thoughts. There are moments of high tension and anxiety that are characteristic of a plotline as thrilling as one about a bombing. Yet, these moments are almost entirely unrelated to the actual solving of the crime and are often overshadowed by the deep explorations into Lee's character and history as a flawed human being. Details of the environment and the characters are amply provided to the point of being overwhelming, yet are successful in completely immersing the reader into the moment and into the characters' frame of thought. This would not be a book to recommend to those desiring a conventional thriller novel, but possibly those interested in more psychologically thrilling or scathingly introspective books.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 15, 2012
Fast-paced yet rambling, a page-turner that's imminently skimmable, a thriller that's horribly plotted....How to describe this book. Reading it made me quite anxious and uncomfortable, but I thoroughly appreciated and respected that feeling and loved the book all the more for it. The story is thoroughly engrossing, and Choi is a captivating writer with a sophisticated outlook on her characters and the world at large.
But I had two main issues. First, it's not at all about what you think it's about. I knew it was inspired by the Unabomber plot and the Wen Ho Lee saga, and the flap copy implied it was going to be a DeLillo-style thriller about mistaken identity and the tenseness of contemporary race relations. This was not the case. The whole bombing plot seemed to happen offstage, and the entire race piece, though it claimed to loom large, was pretty much entirely marginalized and incidental -- the power of the book would be not at all diminished if the character happened to be white. Thankfully, this doesn't matter. Without giving anything away, this is not so much a thriller as a good old-fashioned melodrama about love, betrayal, loyalty, family, and what it means to grow up and grow old. Lee is a delightfully unlikable creation and I was glad to lose a DeLilloesque allegory or cypher novel if it meant getting to spend time bumbling along with him. I cringed and thrilled to follow him back and forth through his poast and through all his anxieties over the ages. He's a selfish, awkward, prickly, incompetent, insecure rageaholic, and you root for him the entire time -- a true triumph.
Second issue: this book needs a decent editor! I finished this in like 2 days but it still felt much too long. Choi writes beautifully and very fluidly, but there is so much description and scene-setting that isn't needed. I skimmed constantly, and flipped testily past the countless 40-line descriptions of highways, mountains, stains on a dive bar countertop, etc. etc. etc. to get to the true beating, powerful heart of the novel. Skimming is not typically how one best enjoys a thriller about domestic terrorism and the hunt for a serial killer, and it broke up the inexorable, chilling pace of the novel in a way that was to Choi's detriment, especially as the bomb plot picked up later in the book. I would gladly have given this five stars if the constant needless descriptions had been cut out, leaving me with a leaner, more relentlessly disturbing, more fast-paced, and more unforgettable read.
Cocktail party tidbit: Choi is the wife of the current New York Times food critic, Pete Wells. At the worst moments it seemed she'd picked up his writing style -- Wells is in love with his own words, with clever scene-setting, with doing anything but getting to the value judgement about the restaurant itself.
But I had two main issues. First, it's not at all about what you think it's about. I knew it was inspired by the Unabomber plot and the Wen Ho Lee saga, and the flap copy implied it was going to be a DeLillo-style thriller about mistaken identity and the tenseness of contemporary race relations. This was not the case. The whole bombing plot seemed to happen offstage, and the entire race piece, though it claimed to loom large, was pretty much entirely marginalized and incidental -- the power of the book would be not at all diminished if the character happened to be white. Thankfully, this doesn't matter. Without giving anything away, this is not so much a thriller as a good old-fashioned melodrama about love, betrayal, loyalty, family, and what it means to grow up and grow old. Lee is a delightfully unlikable creation and I was glad to lose a DeLilloesque allegory or cypher novel if it meant getting to spend time bumbling along with him. I cringed and thrilled to follow him back and forth through his poast and through all his anxieties over the ages. He's a selfish, awkward, prickly, incompetent, insecure rageaholic, and you root for him the entire time -- a true triumph.
Second issue: this book needs a decent editor! I finished this in like 2 days but it still felt much too long. Choi writes beautifully and very fluidly, but there is so much description and scene-setting that isn't needed. I skimmed constantly, and flipped testily past the countless 40-line descriptions of highways, mountains, stains on a dive bar countertop, etc. etc. etc. to get to the true beating, powerful heart of the novel. Skimming is not typically how one best enjoys a thriller about domestic terrorism and the hunt for a serial killer, and it broke up the inexorable, chilling pace of the novel in a way that was to Choi's detriment, especially as the bomb plot picked up later in the book. I would gladly have given this five stars if the constant needless descriptions had been cut out, leaving me with a leaner, more relentlessly disturbing, more fast-paced, and more unforgettable read.
Cocktail party tidbit: Choi is the wife of the current New York Times food critic, Pete Wells. At the worst moments it seemed she'd picked up his writing style -- Wells is in love with his own words, with clever scene-setting, with doing anything but getting to the value judgement about the restaurant itself.
August 11, 2009
This book had a lot of potential; unfortunately, verbosity and excessive detail and rumination got in the way. The basic plot was thriller-like – a bomb kills misanthropic Professor Lee’s colleague, and events conspire so that Professor Lee is falsely implicated as a possible culprit. There’s also a backstory: Professor Lee’s first wife, Aileen, was originally married to a graduate school friend of his; the circumstances surrounding Lee and Aileen’s initial union were ugly and became uglier as Aileen was manipulated into relinquishing custody of her first child as a result of her extramarital affair with Lee. Lee’s marriage with Aileen eventually deteriorates, which is not surprising considering Lee’s tendencies toward selfishness and volatility. The two plotlines come together as Lee naturally suspects his former friend of framing him for the bombing given their past history, but finds it increasingly difficult to convince the FBI who are pretty persistent in pursuing him.
This book had a lot of things working in its favor – a suspenseful story, psychological complexity, and adept prose. Unfortunately, the story was weighted down by lots of unnecessary description and detail and a great deal of rumination which neither moved the plot along nor provided much depth. It took a really long time for the story to get started, and even once it did, it didn’t really move for the first 2/3 of the book. Additionally, none of the major characters particularly appealed to me (I actually preferred a few of the minor ones, but unfortunately their role was peripheral), although I give Choi credit for managing to evoke my sympathy for Lee even as she painted him as someone I wouldn’t especially want to know. Choi seems to be a good writer, and I would be interested in picking up her earlier book, “American Woman,” which some goodreads reviewers seem to have preferred. I wouldn’t recommend this one, though.
This book had a lot of things working in its favor – a suspenseful story, psychological complexity, and adept prose. Unfortunately, the story was weighted down by lots of unnecessary description and detail and a great deal of rumination which neither moved the plot along nor provided much depth. It took a really long time for the story to get started, and even once it did, it didn’t really move for the first 2/3 of the book. Additionally, none of the major characters particularly appealed to me (I actually preferred a few of the minor ones, but unfortunately their role was peripheral), although I give Choi credit for managing to evoke my sympathy for Lee even as she painted him as someone I wouldn’t especially want to know. Choi seems to be a good writer, and I would be interested in picking up her earlier book, “American Woman,” which some goodreads reviewers seem to have preferred. I wouldn’t recommend this one, though.
November 30, 2008
This novel is an intriguing, intimate portrait of a man who does not seem to know how to relate intimately to others, even those he most deeply loves. Choi captures the isolation of a shy, anxious, and often arrogant man in often wry prose, marked with vivid images. The image of Lee's "many chambered anxieties" and the scene in which everything at home "seemed to have adopted a posture of conflict" against him seemed particularly apt. But by far the best writing in the novel surrounds Lee's first wife, Aileen, and her bond wih her first child. As a first time mother, these scenes really resonated with me and were heartbreaking. Equally poignant is the love Lee holds for his daughter, all the more moving because he is so terribly inept at showing it.
My main complaints with the book are:
1. It's pace -- too much time spent building to the climax (both in the past and the present) and a bit too much detail about Lee's social ineptness and character flaws. I sometimes muttered as I was reading "He's paranoid, we get it, move on!"
2. The initial spark between Lee and Aileen seemed flimsy and unbelievable. His deep and abiding love is captured subtly and lyrically later in the novel, but I never could understand what drew them together in the first place.
3. This is more a complaint against the character than the writing: Lee does a downright despicable thing to Aileen and it's hard to reconcile his love for her with his coldheartedness in this action.
Still, if you have the patience for a bit of slow pace, it's worth the work.
My main complaints with the book are:
1. It's pace -- too much time spent building to the climax (both in the past and the present) and a bit too much detail about Lee's social ineptness and character flaws. I sometimes muttered as I was reading "He's paranoid, we get it, move on!"
2. The initial spark between Lee and Aileen seemed flimsy and unbelievable. His deep and abiding love is captured subtly and lyrically later in the novel, but I never could understand what drew them together in the first place.
3. This is more a complaint against the character than the writing: Lee does a downright despicable thing to Aileen and it's hard to reconcile his love for her with his coldheartedness in this action.
Still, if you have the patience for a bit of slow pace, it's worth the work.
August 16, 2016
Susan Choi has utilized the Unabomber episode in recent history to delve into issues of professional jealousy, academic politics, guilt and cowardice. Professor Lee, a tenured mathematics professor at a small Midwest university, is wounded when a package delivered to a professor in a next-door office detonates. The FBI connects Lee to the search for the culprit through the receipt of a mysterious letter from a former colleague. By nature secretive and socially insecure, Lee heightens suspicions by his deceptive behaviors which have more to do with tragedies connected to the flight from his homeland and his long-buried guilt over an affair and first marriage.
"A Person of Interest" reveals the sad consequences of mistrust, envy and dishonorable behavior. Choi controls the playing out of information about Lee, his wife Aileen, his academic colleagues and his chief FBI interlocutor. She is a master at maintaining tension and building suspense. With limited dialogue and page-length paragraphs of physical description and psychological introspection, her prose is at times reminiscent of Henry James.
"A Person of Interest" may require energetic attentiveness on the part of the reader, but it rewards on so many levels.
"A Person of Interest" reveals the sad consequences of mistrust, envy and dishonorable behavior. Choi controls the playing out of information about Lee, his wife Aileen, his academic colleagues and his chief FBI interlocutor. She is a master at maintaining tension and building suspense. With limited dialogue and page-length paragraphs of physical description and psychological introspection, her prose is at times reminiscent of Henry James.
"A Person of Interest" may require energetic attentiveness on the part of the reader, but it rewards on so many levels.
July 4, 2009
I selected this book partially because it had been billed as a "literary mystery." Unfortunately, it had annoyingly little mystery and a whole lot of pomposity that I wouldn't exactly call literary. The book, primarily about the life choices, judgments, and unremarkableness of its protagonist--a Japanese math professor--had a convoluted, intertwined mish-mash of character interactions it called a plot. I found it excruciatingly dull at times. Most of the book takes place inside people's heads and not the real world with the narrative viewpoint shifting from one character to another. Unfortunately, few if any of them were interesting enough to keep my attention. They mostly seemed like whiny, miserable people repeatedly making poor life choices. I don't need to read a book for that, I can manage doing that myself quite well. I want heroes and villains, complicated personalities with quirks and twists.
Plus, I do like my novels to have a plot of some sort. I should have given up earlier, but I kept hoping this book was eventually was eventually going to settle into its voice and its story. For me, that never happened.
Plus, I do like my novels to have a plot of some sort. I should have given up earlier, but I kept hoping this book was eventually was eventually going to settle into its voice and its story. For me, that never happened.
August 13, 2009
This AIR finalist by a former Pulitzer Prize finalist begins with the fatal bombing of a mathematician's office at a midwestern university in a small college town. The story is told from the perspective (though not in the voice) of the Asian immigrant mathematician whose office is right next door & who is interviewed & investigated by the FBI as "a person of Interest," which leads him to be viewed by the community as a suspect. Despite the subject, this is no thriller; it's not even a page-turner. It is consumed with introspection, often in long, rambling, complex sentences that require rereading to untangle (Francine Prose writes in the NY Times that "Her long, complex sentences compel us to follow wherever they go, and to admire the quiet authority, at once soothing and gripping, with which they arrive there"). I can't imagine what book groups would talk about (though reviewers haven't had the same difficulty: a reviewer for the Washington Post says that "only the most pathologically overconfident person could read these flawless scenes without resonating to Lee's anxiety"). To me, if not to reviewers, this is mediocre, at best.
October 12, 2019
If life gives you a power outage, read this book - or another like it.
I was mesmerized by the long sentences and intricate paragraphs. The main character did not do much for me. I quarreled with the author's coyness about his origins in Asia. Perhaps she is teasing those who might guess that to be never more than a day or so from the ocean, and to speak Japanese but have the clearly nonJapanese name, Lee, the character had to be ... But perhaps she is right that this should not matter.
Why not tell the story with the character of Aileen in the center, I thought. No matter. She makes her mark in this book. As does John/Mark/Lewis and his choice to live "light" - everything in a single backpack - that does mean something, no? The plot, carefully researched and constructed, is satisfying. Life on the run, with furtive stops at fast food establishments, greasy burgers, and recourse to dark bushes all sounds "true."
The writing is hypnotic, though dense. We learn how easily we are deceived, how we misjudge friends and lovers. The whole story sounds like a long drive with the professor at the wheel, long and exactly at the speed limit. One wishes for an occasional speeding up.
I was mesmerized by the long sentences and intricate paragraphs. The main character did not do much for me. I quarreled with the author's coyness about his origins in Asia. Perhaps she is teasing those who might guess that to be never more than a day or so from the ocean, and to speak Japanese but have the clearly nonJapanese name, Lee, the character had to be ... But perhaps she is right that this should not matter.
Why not tell the story with the character of Aileen in the center, I thought. No matter. She makes her mark in this book. As does John/Mark/Lewis and his choice to live "light" - everything in a single backpack - that does mean something, no? The plot, carefully researched and constructed, is satisfying. Life on the run, with furtive stops at fast food establishments, greasy burgers, and recourse to dark bushes all sounds "true."
The writing is hypnotic, though dense. We learn how easily we are deceived, how we misjudge friends and lovers. The whole story sounds like a long drive with the professor at the wheel, long and exactly at the speed limit. One wishes for an occasional speeding up.
June 30, 2009
Francine Prose writes that Choi's novel "combin[es:] the unhurried pleasures of certain classics with the jittery tensions of more recent fiction," and that is exactly true. The book plumbs identity, cultural awareness, immigrant experiences, parent-child relationships, and professional competition (among many other things), without being about any of them. It is about the story it tells. And the story it tells is about a professor of mathematics grazed by the drama of a campaign of anti-technological terrorism (based on the Unabomber), and eventually enmeshed in the investigation. The story of his life since emigrating to the US and entering grad school comes under his own scrutiny as events unfold, and by the end of the book he is virtually naked and newborn, vulnerable for perhaps the first time in his life, yet someow stronger and more human than he has ever been.
April 26, 2010
I was tempted to include this on my "horror" shelf. That's because of what happens to poor Prof. Lee when the FBI becomes interested in him, in their investigation of a bombing. Quite frankly, Lee isn't even a sympathetic character. He seldom expresses emotion, even to himself, despite some fairly dramatic happenings in his life. It wouldn't be fair to say that he ruined his wife's life, but he sure didn't do much to save it from ruin. Ditto for his daughter's life. None the less, his treatment by the FBI, the responses of his colleagues, students, neighbors, etc. made me so angry! It didn't matter that he wasn't likable; he didn't deserve the treatment he received. The book does illustrate some of the consequences of being one of those "quiet" or "loner" types we see discussed so often.
In the end, the book made me cry. How could I possibly give it fewer than 5 stars?
In the end, the book made me cry. How could I possibly give it fewer than 5 stars?
October 7, 2014
As usual, Choi distances her narrative from (yet disappears into) the main character, who through alienation, bitterness, and misanthropy (played out in every aspect of his life, also seamlessly presented) sets himself up as suspect number one in the investigation of the Unibomber death of a popular academician whom he has also seen as a rival. I never questioned a move this character made, both in present and back story, thanks to Choi's brilliant writing.
April 2, 2014
I FINALLY finished ugh barf all over this book. Except for this part:
"When she wasn't pursuing this train, she was singing the deluded song of praise for Esther's near-delinquent friends. They were misfits, Aileen said, as if this were something to cherish. All too smart or too creative or too morally distressed-BY WHAT? Lee thought scornfully. HAMBURGERS?"
"When she wasn't pursuing this train, she was singing the deluded song of praise for Esther's near-delinquent friends. They were misfits, Aileen said, as if this were something to cherish. All too smart or too creative or too morally distressed-BY WHAT? Lee thought scornfully. HAMBURGERS?"
February 27, 2013
This is a highly interesting and extremely well-written book, fast-paced except in a few rare places which I admit could have been cut down. One of the most compelling things is that the plot is actually based on real-life events, most importantly the story of Ted Kaczynski, a PhD Mathematician, social critic and Professor at Berkeley University of California who eventually became a terrorist known as the 'Unabomber'. As a result of his Marxist-inspired beliefs, Kaczynski slowly began to reject technological advances as contrary to human progress, since those advances could be used for violent and even lethal purposes, as exemplified by the advent of the nuclear bomb during World War II. The only way forward for Kaczynski was to target those brilliant minds who spearheaded technological advances, i.e. researchers and academics, hence his nickname of 'Unabomber' as he sent out mail containing bombs to university professors and other people whose work he deemed dangerous for the future of humanity. Kaczynski was eventually arrested for his brutal use of anarchist beliefs to justify the bombings, which he declared were the only way society would take heed and turn away from technological 'progess' (he had ceased to believe in debate and peaceful social reform). He is now serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and it is his story that forms the overall story arc of Susan Choi's novel.
There are other historical and cultural references in this very rich book, especially those concerning McCarthyism and the hysterical anti-Communist mindset of that era, as the protagonist, a Mathematics professor called Lee, is of Asian descent and therefore comes under strong suspicion during those troubled years of American history. He relates his run-in with the authorities, which considered him more suspicious than white Americans on account of his origins, due to the prominence of China as a Communist country.
Mixing real historical events with fiction, Choi weaves a tale of love, failed ambition and desire for redemption which constantly reminds the reader that the personal sometimes really IS political, as her protagonist Lee arouses the FBI's suspicions for two main reasons: his Asian background AND his inability to mourn his colleague publicly (that colleague is the book's 'Unabomber''s victim in the opening pages). In other words, this book exposes the injustice of racial profiling and the cult of collective expressions of grief, if one can put it that way. Indeed, Lee never liked his colleague Hendley, and he is therefore unable and unwilling to fake grief by going to the memorial organized for him by the university. That combined with the fact that the two professors were known to have antagonized each other time and again seems enough for the FBI to direct its attention to Lee.
Except there is also a THIRD reason, which is also the one that gives credence to the idea that the personal is political in this novel, as Lee lies to FBI agents about one piece of mail, a letter from Lewis Gaither. Gaither and Lee were best friends in graduate school, but ended up falling out completely when Lee stole Gaither's wife Aileen when she was still pregnant with her and Gaither's first child, a son they decided to call John. Gaither writes to Lee after a silence of 3 decades, and the letter is interpreted by Lee as a taunt and an insult, a way for Gaither of taking revenge on the man who stole his wife. This is the reason why he lies to the FBI, saying he threw that letter away in order to spare himself the humiliation of other people finding out that the only personal correspondence he's recently received is an unfriendly and unwelcome one. This seemingly benign lie transforms itself into a major incident which underpins the whole plot, as the FBI finds out that Lee lied and misconstrue his lack of forthcoming cooperation as proof of his having something to hide. Lee thereby becomes a 'person of interest', which differs from a 'suspect' in the sense that they are not charging him with anything at that stage. Even when Lee finally tells them the truth about Gaither and him, the agents are unconvinced and force Lee to take a polygraph test in order to ascertain whether or not he is still lying to them. The results are conclusive and declare Lee has been truthful.
While all these events are unfolding, Lee is constantly looking back on various periods of his life, from his graduate school days with Gaither, to his meeting and subsequent affair with Aileen, and perhaps most importantly, the divorce crisis he created, which resulted in Aileen losing custody of John and a son growing up without his real mother. Indeed, Gaither took John away from Aileen and Lee did not try to stop it; in fact he welcomed this vengeful move as he had no desire to raise his former friend's son. Lee's betrayal of his friend seems even worse when seen in the light of his inability to stand by the woman he betrayed him for: he could at the very least have attempted to get John to come and see his mother before she died on a hospital bed without having ever known her son... And that's the problem with this book, and the reason why I can only give it 3 stars: for all the fine and acute psychological insight Choi puts into her protagonist, he is almost never likable for more than 5 pages, since his loneliness and estrangement from his daughter as well as other people seem largely of his own doing...
One does however feel pity and even anger on his behalf when Lee is confronted with the FBI's abrupt declaration that they have re-examined his polygraph and found it inconclusive due to his ethnic background: apparently, lie-detectors do not work on Asian and Middle Eastern people because they have a different ethical make-up/understanding of the truth as relative or whichever way they try to explain it to an outraged Lee (whose day began with being asked to take some 'time off' teaching until the FBI case and rumors 'blow over')!!! I thought this episode in the book constituted a powerful and very apt indictment of the practice of racial profiling, one that resonates even today...
But then again the ending ruins all this by offering a kind of deus ex machina resolution to the question of who is the 'Brain Bomber' and who recognized him from the kind of language he used in his anti-technological society Manifesto, therefore tipping off the FBI and leading to his arrest... indeed, the answer is just dropped on the reader without any kind of build-up or prior hint/indication as to that person being guilty all along... there is only one word for this: ANTI-CLIMACTIC!!!
There are other historical and cultural references in this very rich book, especially those concerning McCarthyism and the hysterical anti-Communist mindset of that era, as the protagonist, a Mathematics professor called Lee, is of Asian descent and therefore comes under strong suspicion during those troubled years of American history. He relates his run-in with the authorities, which considered him more suspicious than white Americans on account of his origins, due to the prominence of China as a Communist country.
Mixing real historical events with fiction, Choi weaves a tale of love, failed ambition and desire for redemption which constantly reminds the reader that the personal sometimes really IS political, as her protagonist Lee arouses the FBI's suspicions for two main reasons: his Asian background AND his inability to mourn his colleague publicly (that colleague is the book's 'Unabomber''s victim in the opening pages). In other words, this book exposes the injustice of racial profiling and the cult of collective expressions of grief, if one can put it that way. Indeed, Lee never liked his colleague Hendley, and he is therefore unable and unwilling to fake grief by going to the memorial organized for him by the university. That combined with the fact that the two professors were known to have antagonized each other time and again seems enough for the FBI to direct its attention to Lee.
Except there is also a THIRD reason, which is also the one that gives credence to the idea that the personal is political in this novel, as Lee lies to FBI agents about one piece of mail, a letter from Lewis Gaither. Gaither and Lee were best friends in graduate school, but ended up falling out completely when Lee stole Gaither's wife Aileen when she was still pregnant with her and Gaither's first child, a son they decided to call John. Gaither writes to Lee after a silence of 3 decades, and the letter is interpreted by Lee as a taunt and an insult, a way for Gaither of taking revenge on the man who stole his wife. This is the reason why he lies to the FBI, saying he threw that letter away in order to spare himself the humiliation of other people finding out that the only personal correspondence he's recently received is an unfriendly and unwelcome one. This seemingly benign lie transforms itself into a major incident which underpins the whole plot, as the FBI finds out that Lee lied and misconstrue his lack of forthcoming cooperation as proof of his having something to hide. Lee thereby becomes a 'person of interest', which differs from a 'suspect' in the sense that they are not charging him with anything at that stage. Even when Lee finally tells them the truth about Gaither and him, the agents are unconvinced and force Lee to take a polygraph test in order to ascertain whether or not he is still lying to them. The results are conclusive and declare Lee has been truthful.
While all these events are unfolding, Lee is constantly looking back on various periods of his life, from his graduate school days with Gaither, to his meeting and subsequent affair with Aileen, and perhaps most importantly, the divorce crisis he created, which resulted in Aileen losing custody of John and a son growing up without his real mother. Indeed, Gaither took John away from Aileen and Lee did not try to stop it; in fact he welcomed this vengeful move as he had no desire to raise his former friend's son. Lee's betrayal of his friend seems even worse when seen in the light of his inability to stand by the woman he betrayed him for: he could at the very least have attempted to get John to come and see his mother before she died on a hospital bed without having ever known her son... And that's the problem with this book, and the reason why I can only give it 3 stars: for all the fine and acute psychological insight Choi puts into her protagonist, he is almost never likable for more than 5 pages, since his loneliness and estrangement from his daughter as well as other people seem largely of his own doing...
One does however feel pity and even anger on his behalf when Lee is confronted with the FBI's abrupt declaration that they have re-examined his polygraph and found it inconclusive due to his ethnic background: apparently, lie-detectors do not work on Asian and Middle Eastern people because they have a different ethical make-up/understanding of the truth as relative or whichever way they try to explain it to an outraged Lee (whose day began with being asked to take some 'time off' teaching until the FBI case and rumors 'blow over')!!! I thought this episode in the book constituted a powerful and very apt indictment of the practice of racial profiling, one that resonates even today...
But then again the ending ruins all this by offering a kind of deus ex machina resolution to the question of who is the 'Brain Bomber' and who recognized him from the kind of language he used in his anti-technological society Manifesto, therefore tipping off the FBI and leading to his arrest... indeed, the answer is just dropped on the reader without any kind of build-up or prior hint/indication as to that person being guilty all along... there is only one word for this: ANTI-CLIMACTIC!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 22, 2018
Lee, an immigrant with no first name and no defined country of origin, feels isolated from those around him. He lives almost entirely between his own ears, where he wraps memories and worries abut his graduate school colleagues, his first wife, his second wife, his neighbors, his daughter, his trees, his yard, his books, his students, his colleagues, his drinking, and his house into an ever-tightening knot of half formed fears. He speaks socially but never at length. He almost seems to fit the autism spectrum.
When a bomb kills the hated colleague in the office next to him, Lee obsesses over his dislike for the man as well as the myriad of slights that he has endured because of him and, when the FBI declares Lee a "person of interest," his mind traps tighten even more.
This accounts for about 2/3 of the novel. The other 1/3 tells the story of another, tangentially related character, and also of his most interesting experience as a person. The first 2/3 of the book are a combination of Crime and Punishment and The Tell-Tale Heart; the last part a combination of Wild and stories of the Unabomber.
When a bomb kills the hated colleague in the office next to him, Lee obsesses over his dislike for the man as well as the myriad of slights that he has endured because of him and, when the FBI declares Lee a "person of interest," his mind traps tighten even more.
This accounts for about 2/3 of the novel. The other 1/3 tells the story of another, tangentially related character, and also of his most interesting experience as a person. The first 2/3 of the book are a combination of Crime and Punishment and The Tell-Tale Heart; the last part a combination of Wild and stories of the Unabomber.
March 22, 2022
I read Trust Exercise a year or two ago and really enjoyed it, so added Susan Choi to my list of "authors to read more of". This older novel follows an Asian-born math professor at an unnamed midwestern university whose boring life is turned upside down when his popular young colleague is killed by a mail bomb that also wounds our protagonist (Professor Lee).
He's initially a sympathetic figure, but he's also a huge misanthrope who's rude to his coworkers, doesn't attend the funeral, etc... Fully relatable to me! When he tells the FBI investigators what he (reasonably) thinks is a white lie, and they in turn begin to investigate him as a "person of interest", the local community turns against him.
I like that premise, although I will say I thought it was a bit overdone just how completely/quickly his peers and neighbors turn on him. I was also frustrated at the spiral this sends him down, because he has a ton of opportunities to sway people to his side and he whiffs on basically all of them, although that all felt totally believable to me within the character.
This is a big book, and it's a bit of a grind for the first 90%; then the final few chapters get a little silly when there's an action-packed conclusion, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. 3.5 stars, and will read more Susan Choi!
He's initially a sympathetic figure, but he's also a huge misanthrope who's rude to his coworkers, doesn't attend the funeral, etc... Fully relatable to me! When he tells the FBI investigators what he (reasonably) thinks is a white lie, and they in turn begin to investigate him as a "person of interest", the local community turns against him.
I like that premise, although I will say I thought it was a bit overdone just how completely/quickly his peers and neighbors turn on him. I was also frustrated at the spiral this sends him down, because he has a ton of opportunities to sway people to his side and he whiffs on basically all of them, although that all felt totally believable to me within the character.
This is a big book, and it's a bit of a grind for the first 90%; then the final few chapters get a little silly when there's an action-packed conclusion, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. 3.5 stars, and will read more Susan Choi!
May 27, 2022
This took me forever to finish because the first 2/3 were SO SLOW. I’ll admit that I only read Trust Exercise before this, but Susan Choi has some beautiful prose that goes much better with some weird/avant grande shit. This plot was way too normie for her voice to shine
July 17, 2025
Total waste of time. Zzzzzz…
September 25, 2025
This is an INTERESTING and EXCITING well written novel with a labyrinth of events and personalities.
Dr Lee, a professor of mathematician , is a solitary character, is accused of killing his neighboring professor.
FBI is called in and states that they can not obtain correct lie detector results on “Asians “
So in other words his results can not help him either way. Lol
It’s a well created text with an interesting story line.
Dr Lee, a professor of mathematician , is a solitary character, is accused of killing his neighboring professor.
FBI is called in and states that they can not obtain correct lie detector results on “Asians “
So in other words his results can not help him either way. Lol
It’s a well created text with an interesting story line.
February 12, 2025
really fascinating premise and really layered. lots of big words and I can't tell if it's just my bandwidth/brain power or I'm reading slower because the vocabulary is more intense - either way, lots of looking up definitions. enjoyed this one!!!!
edit: wish i could give it 3.5 stars
edit: wish i could give it 3.5 stars
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