Susan Choi's newest novel, "A Person of Interest," is a complex thriller that rises above the usual standards for the genre. Professor Lee, an Asian-born mathematics professor at an undistinguished university, has lived an increasingly quiet and isolated life after the exodus of his second wife and the estrangement of his only child. His days are spent teaching calculus to indifferent undergraduates, worrying about how he is "coming off" to others (he wraps his empty beer and wine bottles in newspaper and carries them to the trash bin in cover of darkness so that his neighbors will see no evil/hear no evil), and nursing a festering resentment of Professor Hendley (middle-aged "hipster"), whose neighboring office is under constant barrage by starstruck undergraduates while Lee's office threshold gathers dust.
Lee's sedate existence is shattered when a mail bomb explodes in Hendley's office, killing Hendley and turning campus life on its head. Lee becomes increasingly agitated as he attempts to reconcile his self-contained private nature with the need to appear acceptably grief-ridden in the face of the tragedy (Lee skips out of Hendley's memorial service, and recoils at the sanctimonious orgy of tears, grief counseling, and cancelled exams that follow -- how well could the undergraduates have known Hendley, anyway?)
In the midst of the Hendley aftermath, Lee receives a "mail bomb" of a different sort altogether. It so happens that Lee poached his first wife, Aileen, from a fellow graduate student named Lewis Gaither decades ago -- a graduate student who subsequently disappeared and hasn't been heard from since. A letter addressed to Lee sets his head spinning with long-buried feelings of rivalry, regret, and guilt. His roiled state of mind doesn't help him when two FBI agents arrive at his doorstep to interview him about the bombing, and he slowly realizes that his sweaty efforts to "appear normal" have backfired -- he's obviously a suspect.
Choi weaves themes of estrangement and loneliness throughout her novel. Lee's daughter, Esther, has moved to the Rockies where she spends her days in isolation on the edge of a mountain cliff, patiently feeding abandoned eaglets with meat chunks delivered through a plastic tube. Aileen decamps from her marriage to Lewis when she realizes that their union is, at best, a sham of "togetherness." Her subsequent marriage to Lee is detached from the get-go; only their daughter Esther prevents her from fleeing earlier than she does. Lewis Gaither, an intensely religious man, recovers from Eileen's departure by marrying a fellow parishioner named Ruth, and their subsequent lives are spent wandering from one misbegotten mission outpost to another like fundamentalist nomads. Their itinerant travel has a negative effect on their young son, Mark, who is further isolated by the fact that he doesn't share their religious convictions.
Choi is at her best when she explores the inner workings of characters who are self-aware of their "otherness." Lee is ambivalent about his solitude -- he isn't upset about living alone, but he worries whether the neighbors might feel sorry for him; he is torn between feelings of resentment and relief when students don't visit his office; he is at once pleased and irritated when Gaither invites him to a church social. All of these feelings are intensified by Lee's status as an immigrant who will always remain, at least in his own mind, a "foreigner." "[Lee] had felt that his place in the world was unsteady and worthless, a perch best abandoned and, more than that, not even his." Choi's portrayal of"the immigrant's sense of hopeless illegitimacy and impending exposure" speaks to the occasional alienated (and sometimes paranoid) introvert in all of us.
I've not given away any "spoilers" here. The book's plot line is filled with twists, turns, and a bang-up ending. If you don't read it for its thriller appeal or psychological depth, read it for the prose, which is wonderful:
"The cherry trees had exploded like fireworks and left their pink litter all over the ground."
"She was aware of the need to frame an objection that was calm, logical, but she felt herself flailing around in her mental closet, knocking things off the shelf."
I highly recommend that you read this book.
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