Excellent, well developed characters. In Lin we see how easy it is to fall into always wanting what is not ours, and, in his case, how that impacts all around him.

It is too easy to use the title of this novel as a cheap shot about the tedium of its pace. Most of the plot is implicit in the first paragraph of the prologue and, although the author conveys a sense of the quiet oppression of life in Communist China, the dry precision of the descriptive passages only serve to slow the pace further. The phrasing is lapidary and admirable for that but this tautness is distancing. The characters are clearly delineated but I found none of them warming. So, this wins points for style but lacks the human engagement that I seek from a novel. ( )

As the title suggests, the majority of the plot of this book is spent waiting; Lin and Manna wait eighteen years for the freedom to marry, but even when at last that wish is granted, there is more waiting--for a sense of contentment that they both expected but never fully experienced. I had a difficult time with the quiet, understated nature of this book. The characters are rather stoic and passive, especially Lin, and his lack of any strong emotional reaction makes it very difficult to relate to his character. My first reaction was to find the story boring; I felt as though I was actually waiting eighteen years right alongside this dull couple.

As the novel progresses, as Lin moves from waiting for Manna to waiting to be free of her, the author begins to illuminate the depth of the tragedy in which his characters are trapped. Lin's eventual epiphany about the nature of love and the truth about his feelings for Manna is a little contrived--he essentially has a discussion with a wise voice in his head that leads him to the truth--but it does make his reserved character more easily understood. His passivity results in him waiting endlessly for whatever he does not have. At the same time, he is shocked to find out that others, his former brother-in-law, for one, are jealous of his life. "He thought, How we're each sequestered in our own suffering!" As the characters wait on a personal level, wasting opportunities for happiness or enjoyment along the way, the country waits, too--in a holding pattern of a cultural revolution that feels just as static as the rest of the plot. The novel is written in a very spare prose; the details are precise and unobtrusive, and the pace is at times quite tedious. I did have some trouble understanding the necessity of the rape plot, though it does give insight into the societal restrictions and into Lin's typically baffled character, while giving a sort of turning point perhaps for Manna's decline from a somewhat interesting young woman to the unpleasant and fragile person she seems to become, at least in Lin's eyes. Overall, a book I'm almost certain to change my opinion on with time and thought, and I'm glad I read it. ( )

A well-developed and written book whose main character, Lin, is a complex, but very plausible character who is kindly but quite unable to acknowledge or understand his, or others', emotions. It takes dramatic, and sometimes life-threatening, events to occur before he can get in touch with his real feelings. This shortcoming means that he is generally quite unable to understand or comprehend others' needs, even those closest to him. Some of Lin's deficiencies are undoubtedly the result of the strictures imposed by the authoritarian strictures within which he was raised and liveds and the book does a wonderful job at portraying just how stifling these strictures really were for people living under them. But, this certainly does not account for all of Lin's emotional disconnect. His eventual wife, for instance, was raised an orphan in the same circumstances, yet is in touch with her emotions and is able to express them at times. His first wife, however, to the extent the reader is able to "know" her, seems to suffer similar disconnect as Lin, although it is worsened because she is a woman. This was an intricate, detailed and, in many ways, tragic story that very successfully and convincingly interweaves the combined effects of character, gender and the cultural revolution in a compelling and believable tale. ( )

I generally like reading books about China in the years of the Cultural Revolution. I did not enjoy this read very much. It is a love story in a time and place where love was frowned upon. The book somehow did not ring true with me after reading books like Red Azalea, Wild Swans and Life and Death in Shanghai. ( )