A Person of Interest, by Susan Choi
By Peter on Apr 1, 2009 in Excellent book, Fiction Books, Norwegian Writer, Susan Choi, The World of Books, Thriller, bestseller, book review
After fictionalizing elements of the Patty Hearst kidnapping for her second novel (the 2004 Pulitzer finalist American Woman: A Novel
The suggestively named Lee, as he’s called throughout, is a solitary Chinese émigré math professor at the end of an undistinguished Midwestern university career. He remains bitter after two very different failed marriages, despite his love for Esther, his globe-trotting grown daughter from the first marriage.
She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
A Person of Interest starts with a bomb that explodes in the office of a very popular math professor. The professor, Hendley, occupied the office next to Professor Lee. Shortly after the bombing, a jealous, resentful Lee felt himself briefly thinking Oh, good. As a did-he or didn’t-he investigation concerning Lee, the novel’s person of interest, unfolds, Lee’s carefully ordered existence unravels.
Increasingly, chunks of his painful past are forced into the light. While a cagily sympathetic FBI man named Jim Morrison and Lee’s former colleague Fasano – who links the bombings to several other technologists – play well-turned supporting roles, Choi’s reflections from Lee’s gruffly brittle point of view are as intricate and penetrating as the shifting intrigue surrounding the bomb. The result is a magisterial meditation on appearance and misunderstanding as it plays out for Lee as spouse, colleague, exile and citizen.
Rumors spreading at the university among students and colleagues along with broadcasts by the media turn more and more ugly, and Lee soon finds himself suspected by everybody and rapidly becoming totally isolated and alienated. Personal flaws and minor errors that would have been inconsequential in a normal situation suddenly become ominous signs subject to interpretation and reinterpretation. Professor Lee’s life is turned upside down, and his chances of returning to a normal daily life dwindle by the hour. Along with this process goes ever increasing self-consciousness and self-loathing on the part of Lee.
Choi tells a merciless tale of Professor Lee, with a sardonic analysis of his anxiety, his shame, and his compulsive jealousy. It is a wonderful, deeply penetrating analysis that turns Lee into a living, real, frail human being you can almost touch.
Choi tells this complicated story with nuance, psychological acuity and pitch-perfect writing. In doing this, in A Person of Interest she also tells a larger story of paranoia in the age of terror and the smaller story of the cost of failed dreams and the damage we do to one another in the name of love.
Choi shows a remarkable talent and remains, more than ever, a writer of interest. A highly recommended book!
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