American Woman: A Novel

I am only about 60 pages in, and I'm already blown away by this writer. This book is devastating.

Susan Choi's novel is based on the real events surrounding the kidnapping of Patty Hearst in the 1970's. She imbues her narrative with psychological depth and texture, while cleaving close to the true course of events. Instead of focusing on Patty (here named Pauline, the daughter of a wealthy newspaper publisher), Choi turns her attention on Jenny Shimada, a young Japanese-American woman, who, fleeing the Feds after she and her boyfriend orchestrate the bombing of draft offices to protest the Vietnam War, agrees to help Pauline and her kidnappers. This protagonist is based on a real-life person, Wendy Yoshimura, who spent what's now called "the lost year" (1974, when Patty and her captors disappeared) with Patty and two of her show more kidnappers. In Choi's book, the four spend the time in a rented farmhouse in New York State, with Jenny running errands while Pauline and her "comrades" undergo physical training for their fight against "the pigs" and halfheartedly write a book (purportedly to eventually raise money to pay for their lifestyle).

While the author deftly handles Pauline's transformation, the bank robbery, Pauline and Jenny's cross-country trip, this was only part of the story. More important for this reader was the more successful aspect of the novel -- the author's ability to create the atmosphere of suspense for the radicals who have segregated themselves from everyday life as most of us know it. This helps one understand the boredom and slowness of the action as the group is "lying low" out of reluctance to risk being recognized. The slowness ends in dramatic fashion in the final section of the novel with the denouement of the story. Even though you may know the basic history of the underlying events the author is able to maintain your interest.

Another important aspect is Choi's skill at getting inside the heads of her protagonists adding to the particular, unsettling appeal of the novel. What makes Jenny a radical? And what then leads her to wonder whether "perhaps they had been wrong to fight Power on its terms, instead of rejecting its terms utterly"? She presents protagonists that are often conflicted and, in doing so, Choi takes an uncompromising look at issues of race, class, war and peace. That having been said, I found the style of the author limited the effectiveness of her storytelling. This novel reminded me of Lionel Trilling's The Middle of the Journey , a novel that succeeded both in creating an unsettling narrative (loosely based on real-life communist sympathizers in the 1940's) and demonstrating a felicitous prose style. The comparison may seem unfair but having experienced Trilling's prose I could only be disappointed by that of Susan Choi. Nevertheless this novel was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. show less

Susan Choi has recently received a lot of praise for her acclaimed novel Trust Exercise, so when this novel written in 2003 came up on a cheap BookBub site I scooped it up. It's not everyday you get a Pulitzer Prize finalist for 2 bucks.
This is the factionalized story of Wendy Yoshimura, who, in 1974, was on the lam from police for her part in making the bombs that destroyed several military recruitment offices in protest of the war. In this story, she is Jenny, hiding out as a restoration artist in Pennsylvania when Rob Frazier convinced her to watch over the three remaining SLA members after their cadre had been killed in Los Angeles. One of those was Pauline, the famous kidnapped granddaughter of the wealthy newspaper magnet. So yes show more this is in part the Patty Hearst Story, told as imagined by the viewpoint of others, but it's mostly the story of a relationship between these two woman, thrown together in exile, sharing an intense moment that can never last.
The writing is suspenseful and provides insights into a certain revolutionary time in history and brings familiarity to something so seemingly abstract.
NYT
Many older readers will also remember the feel of those days, the starkness of the societal polarization and the extraordinary collisions -- often in the same individual -- of the most ardent idealism and abject cynicism. Psychologically centered though it is on one small group, ''American Woman'' brings back some of the more broadly dispersed intensity of that period.
Lines:
"Everything about that (then) unknown girl had interested Jenny: her ancestors’ legends and ancestral homes and her alleged boarding-school rebellions. The inexhaustible store of her portraits: in tennis whites and first communion whites and giggling on the beach in a T-shirt, and unsmiling in formation with her parents. Her two-seater car and her desire “to be normal,” as described by her boarding-school friends. "

It was Frazer’ theory that the vast majority of people live a decade behind the times, happily, and that a tragic few live ahead of the times, miserably, and are misunderstood and punished. And then there are the people on the leading edge, riding it forward, like surfers, and this was what Frazer was.

He has already struck the match, his hands cupped to protect the small flame against the currents of the air but also to smuggle more of his body into the exchange, under cover of courtesy.

Miss Dolly’s visitors are all extremely punctual and ancient, the men thin and erect and slow-moving, like large wading birds, the women tiny and
blurry and loud.

The sun had just set on the far side of the river, the afterglow a cool wintertime pink, like the flesh of a melon. The leaves were all gone from the trees, and against the suffused evening sky the bare branches formed a dark filigree.

But you can help yourself out by removing temptation. Like the temptation
to go back to a life that’s complacent and selfish. I had that temptation. My comrades needed money to keep doing actions, remove the temptation. So I robbed a bank with them.

Pauline’s old beet-colored dye job had grown out so much that an inch of brown showed at her scalp, strange and vulnerable-looking,
like the fur of some blind newborn mammal. show less

I liked this but didn't love it. Why? I'm not sure. The imagined clash of old underground '60s leftists with the SLA and Patty Hearst should have been monumental, but the plot didn't work well for me. Especially the entire beginning, which is slow off the mark and is told by a self-serving older male radical who turns out to be a pretty meaningless jerk and negligible to the plot as a whole. The interior thoughts are primarily those of Jenny, who bombed banks. Jenny is a Japanese American activist whose family was imprisoned at the Manzanar Japanese concentration camp during WW II (yes, the one that the government DIDN'T put German-Americans in - that very one). Her bombing accomplice/lover has been caught and is away in prison, and she show more is hiding in disguise in upstate NY when she's asked to set up a safe house for the Patty Hearst character, here called Pauline, and her two comrades.

The resulting time spent in a derelict rural farmhouse is rambling and tedious, probably pretty accurate for people in those circumstances. The three fugitives are all completely unlikeable and it's tough to care if and when they are caught; there's just no suspense.

The book's denouement, however, is both satisfying and aggravating, and Jenny turns out to be a very substantial voice. It just takes way, way too long to get there. show less

Slow start focuses on a "bridge" character, who recedes through the main body of the story. Fictionalized Patty Hearst plot includes a Japanese American girl who is both on the run (she was a radical terrorist bomber and her boyfriend is in prison for it) from the law, and from herself--the rage and disconnectedness she feels. She becomes a guardian of the last three members of the "army" that abducted Pauline, modeled after Hearst, and eventually becomes her closest and most intimate friend--her first real intimacy. Written with depth and gravitas, remarkable details in smell and body awareness, Choi's talent and intelligence are displayed in full. Interesting how she transitions between scenes--takes leaps without excuse, and we get it.

It took a while for this one to really take hold of me, but once it did, I was quite hooked. Choi takes a relatively familiar story (Patty Hearst's abduction) and makes it really new and interesting. Doesn't judge the character's actions, it lets them do that themselves. A study of revolution.

I liked the story, but not the writing. Way too wordy, and the author never learned how to use paragraphs.