A Gesture Life [Paperback]

The protagonist of A GESTURE LIFE is Franklin "Doc" Hata, a man of Korean parentage who was adopted by a wealthy Japanese couple and grew up in Japan. Hata, himself, though never married, adopted a racially mixed daughter, Sunny, whom he pushes to excel just as his own adoptive parents pushed him. Sunny, however, proves to be a bit more rebellious than was Hata.

When A GESTURE LIFE opens, Franklin Hata, now retired, is living in Bedley Run, New York, a pillar of respectability and decorum. He takes very good care of his lovely home, he's polite to his neighbors and he was almost venerated by the customers who came into his shop. Hata, however, may have missed out on much of life simply because an incident in his youth caused him to "play it safe" and refuse to take chances. Better to live a peaceful, quiet life, albeit a lonely one, reasons Hata, than expose oneself to the pain of heartbreak.

One of the things I liked most about A GESTURE LIFE is the fact that Lee constantly cuts back and forth between Hata's life "now" in Bedley Run and his youth in Japan. In this way, we learn who Franklin Hata really is and why he makes the choices he does, for even in Japan, Hata felt like an interloper and this feeling of "not belonging" caused him to excel at everything he did, from academic work to military training. The feeling of "not belonging" is also something that Hata knows intimately, for he has felt it all his life.

While in the military, the one event that, more than any other, set the stage for the rest of Hata's life occurred: he met and fell in love with a Korean woman called K, a woman sent by the Japanese army to "comfort" its soldiers. Hata denied his feelings for K during the war, and so, partly in an effort to atone and partly to suppress the pain of heartbreak, Hata denies the full flowering of his own emotional life. He suppresses his urges. He sublimates his desires.

Lee's prose in A GESTURE LIFE is elegant and quiet and contains none of the heavy-handed symbolism found in his third novel, ALOFT. His transitions from present to past and back again are almost seamless and the pace of the book is perfect (it's slow, but slow is perfect for A GESTURE LIFE). A few of the characters are rather one-dimensional, but Hata and Sunny are rich and complex. Although I preferred the narrative that took place during the past, both are masterfully written and Lee's eye for choosing just the right detail to bring his story to life is perfect.

A GESTURE LIFE is an elegant and beautiful novel and, one that is ultimately very sad. It reminds me a more than a little of Kazuo Ishiguro's THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, although I don't think A GESTURE LIFE, as good as it is, is quite the masterpiece THE REMAINS OF THE DAY is. Still, Franklin Hata, is a man, who, like Stevens, tugs at your heart until you find it impossible to forget him.

I would definitely recommend A GESTURE LIFE to anyone who loves quiet character studies and doesn't mind a slower paced book. It is also important book for anyone interested in the immigrant experience in America or in understanding the feelings of displaced persons. Readers of literary fiction should love A GESTURE LIFE, but aficionados of genre fiction probably won't find it to their liking.

Although A GESTURE LIFE isn't perfect, it comes so close, and the character of Franklin Hata is so beautifully drawn I thought it would be a travesty to give the book anything less than five stars.