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Jerry Battle is almost 60 and semi-retired from Battle Brothers Brick and Mortar, a company his father, who is living unhappily in a retirement home, took great pride in. He works part-time at Parade Travel and lives the good life in Huntington Village, a wealthy (and mostly white) area on Long Island that is a far cry from his Italian roots in nearby Whitestone. He has spent his entire life skating around relationships --- his first wife Daisy drowned in their backyard pool, and his long-time girlfriend, Rita, leaves him after taking care of his children and waiting over 10 years for Jerry to pop the question. Kelly, Jerry's co-worker at Parade Travel, dates him briefly and is similarly exasperated with him.
His children also don't seem to know what to do with him. His son, Jack, is a solid guy who is married to an All-American blonde named Eunice, has two children and lives in a ridiculously over-decorated house they can't quite afford. Jack is running the family business into the ground but neglects to discuss this with Jerry directly. Theresa, who is by far a more colorful and interesting character, is Jerry's daughter. She is an overeducated professor, also cursed with thinking too much, and is engaged to Paul, an Asian-American poet who has a serious case of writer's block. Theresa calls her father by his first name and adamantly refuses treatment when she finds out she is simultaneously pregnant and has cancer.
All of this is compounded by the fact that Jerry unintentionally befriends strangers --- such as the couple who sell him his airplane --- but is removed from those he loves the most. Truth be told, everyone thinks Jerry is lazy and aloof. He ruminates about all the neighbors he was cordial with, all the girls he ran around with in his youth and anyone else who might have passed his way in 60-odd years of living. Yet Jerry feels he doesn't have real friends and tries desperately to get back together with Rita.
The novel starts off slowly. There are a lot of unnecessary details about minor characters and it's initially hard to feel sympathy for the protagonist. Once the conflicts of the story are presented and Jerry decides to take some action for once, the pace quickly picks up and doesn't dissipate. Though the story is plot-heavy and meanders right up until the last page (pg. 343), it is immensely readable. Whether it's a lunch celebrating Paul and Theresa's engagement or Jerry remembering his childhood, the details are so vivid and plentiful that the reader will relate to the Battles immensely, even if they've never met anyone like them.
This could have easily been a novel about illness, but Lee is nothing if not ambitious. The author of two previous, critically acclaimed novels about Asian-Americans, Lee tackles race from the perspective of privilege. Daisy was Asian, Jerry's children are half-Asian, Paul is Asian and Jerry has a co-worker whom he calls "the resident Hispanic." But by and large, everyone is white and, true to his character, Jerry thinks about race a lot and shares those thoughts with the reader. Not that Jerry focuses only on people of color. He is equally baffled by women, including Kelly, who hails from the South. Through reminiscences and dialogue, Jerry analyzes the way men treat women without delving into a decisive diatribe.
Chang-rae Lee could have easily (and understandably, depending on your perspective) written a story about how badly white men treat the rest of the world. In interviews, Lee has been quoted as saying that he identifies with his protagonist despite the racial and age differences (Lee is in his 30s). It shows. Lee has written a wonderful story about an imperfect family who love each other at the end of the day.
--- Reviewed by Jane Van Ingen
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