Susan Choi is the author of Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for fiction, as well as the novels The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Education. She is a recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award, a Lambda Literary award, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Brooklyn, New York
"American Woman with its historical acuity and sprawling interior intimacy further confirms that Susan Choi is a writer of scope, ambition and undeniable talent." -- San Francisco Chronicle"In the manner of Don DeLillo's Libra or Joyce Carol Oates in Black Water...[Choi] takes us straight into one of the strangest segments of our ever surreal American dream life." -- New York Times Book Review"Extraordinary generosity and grace .... the author, perhaps as successfully and as powerfully as anyone has, makes us understand how it felt, what it was like ...[an] assured, accomplished work." -- San Diego Union-Tribune"Masterfully plotted ....American Woman is that rarest of creations, a political novel that gives equal weight to its characters' inner and outer lives." -- Salon"With uncompromising grace and mastery, Susan Choi renders the intimate moments which bring to life a tale of prodigious sweep." -- Jhumpa Lahiri"Susan Choi in this second novel proves herself a natural--a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability. I couldn't put American Woman down, and wanted when I finished it to do nothing but read it again." -- Joan Didion"An amazing sense of control ...[and] a compelling exactness...fantasy confronts fantasy in the confusion that gives rise to love, to hatred, to politics. And to gunshots." -- Jay Cantor, Los Angeles Times"[AMERICAN WOMAN] takes a hard-eyed look at American idealism, and yet its imaginative abundance its fascination with self invention and its portrayal of the landscape as a living, breathing presence provide a quintessentially American sense of possibility." -- The New Yorker"Historical sweep and startling particular shrewdness ... Choi has written a fascinating portrait of dangerous fragility." -- New York Times"Few writers since Graham Greene have brought such tender, insightful, poetic, intelligent, darkly comic writing to the political thriller." -- Francisco Goldman"Enthralling, it is Choi's skill at getting inside the heads of her protagonists that gives the novel its particular, unsettling appeal [and] ... grainy psychological depth and texture." -- Publishers Weekly"A hypnotic, winding route through the scorched emotional landscape of 1974 ... Choi's prose radiates intelligence as she traces circles around Jenny and Pauline - near enough that you can feel their warmth, but not so close that you'd ever nail them down." -- Joy Press, Village Voice"Intellectually provocative and vividly imagined." -- Kirkus Reviews"Prepare to be held hostage by Susan Choi's mesmerizing AMERICAN WOMAN." -- Vanity Fair"Riveting ... Choi has the rare gift of bringing such notorious moments of history back to life and making them altogether new." -- Vogue"A brilliant read ... astonishing in its honesty and confidence AMERICAN WOMAN is a haunting book." -- Denver Post"Brilliant ... Choi's insightful understanding, vivid description, lyrical use of language and deft dialogue make it an overall reading pleasure." -- Oregonian"What I find so genuinely exhilarating about Choi's project is her old-fashioned intrepidness, her desire to plunder history without apology in order to recover its heart." -- Minna Proctor, BookForum"An artful, insightful meditation on the radical impulse ... Jenny's wrenching struggle to come to terms with what she's done makes the book resonate with compassion and regret .... [AMERICAN WOMAN] is a complex and layered work." -- Dan Cryer, Newsday"Deeply impressive: confident, historically astute, psychologically persuasive ... beautiful and disturbing... a work of real achievement." -- Jennifer Egan, Nation
After making an auspicious debut with The Foreign Student, Choi delivers a mesmerizing second effort. Inspired by the Patty Hearst kidnapping and extending issues raised in Philip Roth's American Pastoral, this novel sustains its own unwavering, original voice concerning race and politics in the 1970s. Jenny Shimada is a young Japanese American activist in hiding from the government in upstate New York after participating in bombings to protest the Vietnam War. She becomes the ward of three radical fugitives from California, including Pauline, the daughter of a wealthy newspaper magnate, whose kidnapping and conversion to the "cause" has made her a celebrity. When a robbery goes awry, Pauline and Jenny end up on an intense cross-country journey back to the West Coast and the divisive fate awaiting them there. Choi crafts complex, believable characters whose lives intersect with American politics over issues of loss, betrayal, economics, and identity. How it all comes together in an engrossing and emotive story is testament to Choi's deft narration. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/03.]-Prudence Peiffer, Southampton, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
"American Woman with its historical acuity and sprawling interior intimacy further confirms that Susan Choi is a writer of scope, ambition and undeniable talent." -- San Francisco Chronicle"In the manner of Don DeLillo's Libra or Joyce Carol Oates in Black Water...[Choi] takes us straight into one of the strangest segments of our ever surreal American dream life." -- New York Times Book Review"Extraordinary generosity and grace .... the author, perhaps as successfully and as powerfully as anyone has, makes us understand how it felt, what it was like ...[an] assured, accomplished work." -- San Diego Union-Tribune"Masterfully plotted ....American Woman is that rarest of creations, a political novel that gives equal weight to its characters' inner and outer lives." -- Salon"With uncompromising grace and mastery, Susan Choi renders the intimate moments which bring to life a tale of prodigious sweep." -- Jhumpa Lahiri"Susan Choi in this second novel proves herself a natural--a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability. I couldn't put American Woman down, and wanted when I finished it to do nothing but read it again." -- Joan Didion"An amazing sense of control ...[and] a compelling exactness...fantasy confronts fantasy in the confusion that gives rise to love, to hatred, to politics. And to gunshots." -- Jay Cantor, Los Angeles Times"[AMERICAN WOMAN] takes a hard-eyed look at American idealism, and yet its imaginative abundance its fascination with self invention and its portrayal of the landscape as a living, breathing presence provide a quintessentially American sense of possibility." -- The New Yorker"Historical sweep and startling particular shrewdness ... Choi has written a fascinating portrait of dangerous fragility." -- New York Times"Few writers since Graham Greene have brought such tender, insightful, poetic, intelligent, darkly comic writing to the political thriller." -- Francisco Goldman"Enthralling, it is Choi's skill at getting inside the heads of her protagonists that gives the novel its particular, unsettling appeal [and] ... grainy psychological depth and texture." -- Publishers Weekly"A hypnotic, winding route through the scorched emotional landscape of 1974 ... Choi's prose radiates intelligence as she traces circles around Jenny and Pauline - near enough that you can feel their warmth, but not so close that you'd ever nail them down." -- Joy Press, Village Voice"Intellectually provocative and vividly imagined." -- Kirkus Reviews"Prepare to be held hostage by Susan Choi's mesmerizing AMERICAN WOMAN." -- Vanity Fair"Riveting ... Choi has the rare gift of bringing such notorious moments of history back to life and making them altogether new." -- Vogue"A brilliant read ... astonishing in its honesty and confidence AMERICAN WOMAN is a haunting book." -- Denver Post"Brilliant ... Choi's insightful understanding, vivid description, lyrical use of language and deft dialogue make it an overall reading pleasure." -- Oregonian"What I find so genuinely exhilarating about Choi's project is her old-fashioned intrepidness, her desire to plunder history without apology in order to recover its heart." -- Minna Proctor, BookForum"An artful, insightful meditation on the radical impulse ... Jenny's wrenching struggle to come to terms with what she's done makes the book resonate with compassion and regret .... [AMERICAN WOMAN] is a complex and layered work." -- Dan Cryer, Newsday"Deeply impressive: confident, historically astute, psychologically persuasive ... beautiful and disturbing... a work of real achievement." -- Jennifer Egan, Nation
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