Books › Waiting
National Book Award for Fiction 1999
Waiting
First published 1999 · 374 pages
A quiet, agonizing portrait of a love stretched taut across decades of duty and cultural constraint.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like holding your breath for decades. It is a steady, deeply yearning exploration of a life suspended between duty and desire, where the passage of time becomes a heavy, palpable force. The narrative wraps the reader in a stifled, melancholic atmosphere, capturing the quiet agony of a love stretched taut against the immovable walls of tradition and political scrutiny. The prose is piercing and observant, carefully detailing the emotional toll of a romantic triangle trapped within a rigid society. It will deeply resonate with readers who appreciate patient, character-driven historical fiction that favors the slow, agonizing burn of unfulfilled longing over rapid plot twists, offering a profound look at the universal complications of the human heart.
- Mood
- melancholic
- tense
- yearning
- stifled
- Tone
- earnest
- observant
- restrained
- poignant
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- the weight of tradition · forbidden love · the passage of time · duty versus desire · cultural constraints
- The writing
- Piercing and observant, capturing the quiet agonies of a life suspended in time.
- The arc
- A long, agonizing stretch of yearning and frustration as personal desires clash with immovable cultural and familial obligations.
- Who it's for
- Readers who appreciate patient, character-driven historical fiction that explores the quiet devastation of unfulfilled longing and strict societal rules.
Content notes
- infidelity
- marital strife
- emotional repression
About the book
For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young. Every year he visits her in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different WAITING charms and startles with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young. Every year he visits her in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different WAITING charms and startles with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.
Description from Open Library.
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