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AloftBy Chang-rae Lee2005, 384 pages, Paperback. |
ORDER -- Item #3297, Price $14.00
"Jerry Battle, the ruminative narrator of Chang-rae Lee's affecting
new novel is a spiritual relative of both John Updike's Harry (Rabbit)
Angstrom and Walker Percy's Binx Bolling in The Moviegoer.... In
mapping Jerry's world, a small patch of Long Island somewhere between
Cheever country and Gatsby's vanished green Eden, Lee gives us telling
snapshots of the middle class and how one man comes to terms with 'the
plain stupid luck of your draw in a macrocosm rigged with absolutely
nothing particular about you in mind.' (A) wise, keenly observed, and
even more keenly felt picture of the 'endlessly curious circumstance
and beffudlement that attends its hero's life."
"Reading Aloft... is to remember why we read literature in the first
place. With gorgeous prose and sharp-eyed metaphors, Lee reminds us
of things we hold important but have somehow lost track of."
"Chang-rae Lee, named by the New Yorker as one of the twenty writers
for the twenty-first century, has confirmed his place in that company
with Aloft, a masterful treatment of a man coming to terms with his
own disaffection.... Lee just keeps getting better."
Description
Middle class, middle aged angst in a typically mixed up American
family with a partly Asian ethnic background. The main character, an
Italian American named Jerry, mixes up thoughts of family history
(especially the suicide of his mentally ill Korean American wife),
contemporary culture, and family problems as he regularly escapes into
the air in his small plane. In the process he becomes closer to his
family as they all struggle to deal with their flaws.
Comments From the Back Cover
Lee's third novel (after Native Speaker and A Gesture Life) approaches
the problems of race and belonging in America from a new angle—the
perspective of Jerry Battle, the semiretired patriarch of a well-off
(and mostly white) Long Island family. Sensitive but emotionally
detached, Jerry escapes by flying solo in his small plane even as he
ponders his responsibilities to his loved ones: his irascible father,
Hank, stewing in a retirement home; his son, Jack, rashly expanding
the family landscaping business; Jerry's graduate student daughter,
Theresa, engaged to Asian-American writer Paul and pregnant but
ominously secretive; and Jerry's long-time Puerto Rican girlfriend,
Rita, who has grown tired of two decades of aloofness and left him for
a wealthy lawyer. Jack and Theresa's mother was Jerry's
Korean-American wife, Daisy, who drowned in the swimming pool after a
struggle with mental illness when Jack and Theresa were children, and
Theresa's angry postcolonial take on ethnicity and exploitation is met
by Jerry's slightly bewildered efforts to understand his place in a
new America. Jerry's efforts to win back Rita, Theresa's failing
health and Hank's rebellion against his confinement push the
meandering narrative along, but the novel's real substance comes from
the rich, circuitous paths of Jerry's thoughts—about family history
and contemporary culture—as his family draws closer in a period of
escalating crisis. Lee's poetic prose sits well in the mouth of this
aging Italian-American whose sentences turn unexpected corners. Though
it sometimes seems that Lee may be trying to embody too many aspects
of 21st-century American life in these individuals, Jerry's humble and
skeptical voice and Lee's genuine compassion for his compromised
characters makes for a truly moving story about a modern family.
- Publishers Weekly
- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
- Los Angeles Times
- Seattle Times
About the Author
Chang-rae Lee is the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and the
American Book Award for his first book, "Native Speaker" in 1995. He
was born in Seoul, Korea, and is also the author of "A Gesture Life,"
the story of an elderly medical supply house owner recalling his life
being born Korean, raised Japanese, treating Korean "comfort women"
during World War II in the Japanese Imperial Army as a medical
officer, and struggling to adjust to life in America after the war
with his daughter, who rejects his traditional values.
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Copyright © 2005 by AACP, Inc.
Most recent revision May 4, 2005