This book is a real dichotomy.
On the one hand, it is a literary masterpiece, a political allegory, and a love story that won the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction, the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize.
On the other hand, the title
…more is quite apt. The reader will be kept waiting…and waiting…and waiting for something to happen. It doesn't. This is a relatively short book that feels quite long.
At its core, this is a love story. But it's so much more than that. Written by Ha Jin, this is the story of Lin Kong, a man who watches as his life passes him by. Forced into a loveless arranged marriage at an early age, Lin becomes a doctor and works in the big city of Muji, while his wife, Shuyu, and their daughter, Hua, live in rural Goose Village. Every summer he visits them. Every summer he asks Shuyu for a divorce, even making it as far as appearing before a judge. But every summer his request is denied. The impetus for the divorce is simple: At the army hospital, Lin has a girlfriend named Manna Wu. Because adultery is absolutely forbidden by Communist Party, Lin and Manna have a platonic relationship. What happens when Lin is finally granted the divorce after 18 years is at the crux of the novel's ultimate premise.
Lin's life is defined by waiting for everything he can't seem to achieve, and he blames it all on everyone but himself—the Chinese government, the army's regulations, his gossiping coworkers, and society's unwritten, but stringent, rules—when it's actually his own inability to take the risks needed to fully live and love.
The story takes place over several decades from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s during the height of the Chinese cultural revolution. The novel deftly contrasts life in a remote, rural village with life in the city, and also portrays the strict control that the Chinese government had over its citizens' lives and freedoms.
This is a deeply tragic, disturbing, and sorrowful story of a flawed man who waits his entire life for…nothing. And there is an important life lesson in that. Still, this is not an easy read so be prepared for that. (less)