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Accessories:
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 Customer Reviews 
Interesting take on an interesting story
Rating: 
Slow start inexplicably focuses on a "bridge" character, who recedes through the main body of the story, but returns at the end. Fictionalized SLA 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 Patty Hearst, and eventually becomes her closest and most intimate friend--her first real intimacy. Written with precise and sometimes poetic (if altogether too careful) prose, and remarkable details in physicality and body awareness, Choi's talent and intelligence are displayed in full. Structurally interesting in scene transitions--they take leaps without excuse, and we get it. Strong writing, less so in the understanding and complexity of characters.
To Be Frank: A Terrible Book
Rating: 
Susan Choi is, quite simply, a bad writer. Reading this book reminded me of the overexaggerated and ostentatious fiction stories that my classmates used to write in high school. Verbose, overblown, and absolutely pointless self-realizations take up probably 1/2 of the novel.
Choi attempts to falsely create a sense of suspense by writing the entire novel as if it were one big climax, and she ends up with an empty product as the result. While there might be interesting psychological constructions and tidbits of information about the Vietnam era somewhere in the text, everything is lost in unnecessarily grandiose flashbacks that distract from plot development and clichéed poetic prose that had me groaning every five minutes.
What's even worse is the single focus on characters who are arrogant, obnoxious, and completely irredeemable. I found myself constantly looking up to the sky and asking God, "Why is this author making me focus for hundreds of pages on lazy and rude revolutionaries who do absolutely nothing all day?"
You might pick up this book and think you're reading a story of epic proportions, but don't be fooled- American Woman is a terribly written novel with no plot development and characters who are easily detestable.
Unfocused
Rating: 
Susan Choi is a fine writer with an understanding of the complex layers of humanity; however, in her novel American Woman these layers rarely came together to create full characters. Details of life habits do not, of themselves, endow life. The plot, borrowed from history, is nothing without the characters: how their inner reflections shape their external relationships. Unfortunately, Ms. Choi offers a profusion of details without definition, leaving Jenny and Frazer unfocused while Juan and Yvonne remain caricatures. Pauline is her most successful character--never her own person, but always as others see her.
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