A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee

Everyone narrates his or her own life story. What Lee does with Doc Hata shows that each narrative is affected by the personal experience and the background, both intrinsic and extrinsic, of the person telling the story. He or she chooses which stories to tell, which parts to accentuate, and which details to muddy or leave out altogether. In the stories that make up A Gesture Life, the reader is given the clues of what Doc Hata leaves out through his account of other characters’ reactions to him. Mr. Hickey makes reference very early on to how Doc Hata is always the epitome of kindness; however, he is still very upset with him because he is interpreting Doc Hata’s constant visits to Sunny Medical Supply store as coming out of distrust (or rather trust in the Hickey’s failure), which Doc Hata doesn’t overtly dispute even in his internal narration.

Doc Hata often wonders what might have happened if certain events of his own life, or the lives of others (Veronica, the candy striper, for instance: the circumstances surrounding her father’s death, her mother’s promotion, etc.), occurred differently. Would he tell the same story if he stayed in Japan longer? He ruminates about leaving the structured, militaristic culture of Japan (Is he saying that he is actually Korean here – on page 68? Because, if so, then that is a whole new level of confusion, right there!) to the “relative freedoms of everyday, civilian life.” Is it this complacency that affects his relationship with Sunny and leaves his own story with the smattering of narrative holes?

It is also interesting that, although he does speak of Sunny quite a bit, he doesn’t acknowledge the dynamic of the relationship between a Japanese father and his daughter, a relationship the seems to be supported by delicate threads of love, guilt, and manipulation that seems that it would be somewhat dysfunctional in a Japanese world, let alone in the Western world, where it is being played out in this narrative. He shows regret for dealing with Sunny like a Japanese father later in his life, and in the flashbacks, he portrays her as being lost in limbo between the Western and Japanese influences not only in her own personal experience but in the man who adopted her. I have not finished the book, but I cannot help but feel sorry for Sunny; but, that may be what Narrator Franklin Hata wants me to feel.