Native Speaker

I decided to blog about everything I read this year, so I am listing NATIVE SPEAKER by Chang-Rae Lee, even though I didn’t really enjoy it. I might not have finished it if it hadn’t been chosen by my reading group. Lee was born in Korea, but his parents emigrated to the US when he was three. He writes wonderfully about the experience of being a second generation emigrant, which in effect is what he is, and the sense of belonging to neither community. And yet it didn’t grip me, partly I think because so much of the first half was narrated in flashbacks and the real story doesn’t get going until half way through. Or maybe it’s that the flashbacks were the real story.
The novel I am really gripped by at the moment is Larry MacMurtry’s LONESOME DOVE, which I am devouring – first thing in the morning, last thing at night, in the bath and over lunch. It’s over 900 pages long. I’ve just over half way through and already know that I’m not going to want it to finish. More next week.