... a wild-ride picaresque, wisecracking, funny, ambitious, full of sex and danger ... The novel is much like Tiller himself, a strangely meek yet cocky young man who tells his story with the pace of someone setting you up for a scam. It is a bold reworking of the bedroom-community novel established by John Cheever and John Updike, perhaps even a satire of it, the title a wink at both Tiller’s skipping school, John Hughes-style, and the international nature of the book, with its panoply of complex characters who make a mockery of other writers’ attempts to diversify their fictions ... As a picaresque goes, it is an intimate one.
My Year Abroad is an extraordinary book, acrobatic on the level of the sentence, symphonic across its many movements—and this is a book that moves ... a wild ride—a caper, a romance, a bildungsroman, and something of a satire of how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. This isn’t a book that skates through its many disparate-seeming scenes, but rather unites them in the heartfelt adventure of its protagonist, who begins his year 'abroad' as a foreign land to himself and arrives at something like belonging by the end of his story.
An exuberant picaresque in style, My Year Abroad is thematically a study of human consumption, and the kinds of people who benefit from it ... Smaller crises also crop up throughout My Year Abroad, an ambitious work that sows an exhilarating sense that something could go wrong at any turn. More than malice, the characters’ ennui is what threatens their well-being. That relatable boredom makes My Year Abroad a curious quarantine read. Following along with Tiller’s international—if sometimes unsavory—adventures, I found myself wishing I could fly off … nearly anywhere. The trick—and delight—of Lee’s novel is that it forces readers to sit with their confusing desires, to question the appeal of the things we don’t or can’t or shouldn’t have ... To Lee’s credit, he explores this human impulse not through self-conscious inquiry, but through wildly creative, adventurous storylines ... Hunger—to belong, and for belongings—drives the primary conflicts in My Year Abroad. Whatever they’re looking for, the characters find trouble when they let the intensity of their desires cloud their judgment ... In that sense, My Year Abroad prompts the same hunger its story implicitly criticizes: Even at the end of a jam-packed tale, it’s hard not to want more.
Let’s get this out of the way: My Year Abroad is not Chang-rae Lee’s best novel. Not even his second best. But can we agree that even Lee’s worst novel would be better than most authors’ best efforts? ... You could call it a “base-camp novel,” something written between works scaling greater heights. Long preoccupied with the ways identity holds people back, Lee now seems to want to write about how those things open us up, for good or ill. My Year Abroad shows what happens when someone like Tiller Bardmon, whose material needs have been met, risks his emotional safety without a net.
... if the genre of postcolonial travel writing denotes oppressed subjects reclaiming lands taken from them, Lee humorously pushes My Year Abroad into post-postcolonial territory, where the white male gaze stares up at the historically oppressed subject—in this case quite literally from the subaltern. However, Tiller’s racial self-consciousness never leads to revelation or behavioral change, and so the novel continues to drag him through its increasingly Hollywood-esque screenplay ... My Year Abroad’s problem is not its lack of believability but its incessancy, which comes at the cost of the reader’s emotional attachment to the characters ... Lee fails to capture the voice of a 20-year-old narrator ... These weaknesses of My Year Abroad prove not only disappointing when placed next to its skilled manipulation of genre, but also when contemplating the possibility that a hysterical realist style (albeit a slightly more tempered one) could best capture the absurdities of a rapidly changing East and Southeast Asia ... in these rare moments of quiet introspection, when Tiller takes the time to process his time in Asia, that My Year Abroad is at its most poignant. If only the novel allowed Tiller more of this room, perhaps the reader would become more invested in the machinery of its plot, and the 'endless echoes' of his frenetic life could be felt, rather than glazed over.
... everything is brimming and overfull, the energy a constant buzz ... It’s a weird novel ... nearly everything has been knocked askew, the frame set just slightly off-kilter ... the novel plucks tidbits from recent literary fiction ... It’s a dizzying catalog of references. If My Year Abroad is a tasting menu, it’s a very long one, and the flavors don’t always fit together—though the attempt is audacious. It prefers the personal to the political, the palate to the protest ... the novel’s heart is not political but sensual. It’s interested in hunger and consumption, specifically Tiller’s, at the expense of all else. The political slides away, and we move so quickly from moment to moment and taste to taste we’re not always given time to savor or ruminate on things as they pile up—especially the instances of trauma, which tend to slip away unprocessed ... in the end, My Year Abroad feels contemporary but not cutting-edge, a well-prepared version of an older recipe.
... a wild tale that moves coolly between satire and thriller ... unlike anything from Lee’s canon of work...a testament to the Pulitzer-nominated author’s virtuosity ... As the narrative hurtles toward a shocking and cinematic climax, Tiller’s funny and naive observations keep the reader rooting for this wonderfully magnetic lost soul and his enigmatic mentor. Through Tiller’s sweet vulnerability and his steadfast grasp on hope, Lee tells a story of what it means to be plucked from darkness into the light of recognition, and in doing so, explores the fundamental human desires to be seen and to love.
... riveting and sublime ... but the characters and the relationships become convoluted and not richly developed ... Tiller is lost, mostly from parental abandonment, but the angst and rudderless nature of his quest for meaning in life is not developed during the first half of this narrative. Yes, early on we discover his unfortunate family circumstances, but the secrets and lies—the things unsaid—are not adequately touched upon until the second half. His biracial identity also seems vaguely developed although his trip to Asia and Pong's immigrant experience intertwine. What results is a little too much going on within each plot without the essential 'why' being answered, or at least suggested ... A few parallel scenes from his past—much more unspooled than the shadows given to the reader—are sorely needed. One can truly appreciate the skill with which Lee writes, but the story doesn’t capture its audience until the last 100 pages (of over 600). Lee's vivid prose is lyrical, bordering on Shakespearean, and a wonder to behold at times ... Unfortunately, the prose does not reach that climax neatly—lean and clean—and seems like there was no discrete beginning or end, but endless sentences with little momentum moving the action forward until the last section.
When Chang-rae Lee was young, he was drawn to old souls ... Now Lee is fifty-five, and his sixth novel, My Year Abroad, brims with youth ... now, in My Year Abroad, Lee writes like a man released from a cage. His prose unfurls like a scarf pulled from a magician’s mouth, one bright, brash clause after another ... Lee is revelling in his return to freedom. He is having fun ... The trouble is that Lee will not modulate his antic music. The novel starts loud and only gets louder, its language soon cracking under the strain of supporting so much insistent vitality. The goofy jargon that’s meant to telegraph Tiller’s youth comes to seem old, outdated ... It’s not hard to indulge Lee in some of this awkward, enthusiastic grasping ... It’s the literary equivalent of a dad who chaperones his kid to a punk show and winds up happily thrashing in the mosh pit ... The more I read of My Year Abroad, the more I came to feel that I was trapped in a novelistic Netflix, one stuffed episode blurring into the next ... What it cannot usurp is the unsettled private domain, the interior—the very space that Lee has explored, in the past, with such sympathetic, acute intelligence, and that he now seems willing to chuck for the sake of making the pages turn faster. Alas, they don’t.
... rangy, propulsive ... expands on these preoccupations by embracing dark comedy in the manner of Gary Shteyngart and George Saunders ... Even if Lee doesn't quite match the success of Shteyngart's Lake Success, he spins an engaging, layered tale that ferries the reader from the bucolic comforts of a New Jersey university town to an Asia in the throes of economic and cultural change ... At its best, My Year Abroad is a pulse-raising page-turner, with dazzling moments and a Saunders-esque riot of marketing gimmicks and junk food. Unfortunately, though, Lee never quite nails Tiller's voice, which comes across as overly fussy and long-winded. Less would have been more ... The Val story line, too, fails to deliver the emotional charge we feel as Pong tracks his white whale across the largest continent ... And yet Lee still shines as one of our most inventive writers and moralists, a guide we can trust on any odyssey.
... exuberant ... fabulous and wearying ... a novel I feel deeply mixed about. Lee's writing style, as usual, is alive with wit and satiric social commentary. But Tiller is such a walking personification of ennui that it's hard to care very much about what happens to him on the alternative adventure he stumbles into instead of his planned semester abroad ... despite its expanse, My Year Abroad doesn't carry Tiller — or us readers — as far as we might expect. As an excursion, the novel mimics Tiller's own earlier description of those college semester abroad programs: boisterous and fun, but a bit light on core content.
... wildly inventive ... Pong is one of the most intriguing figures in recent fiction. He is generous, curious and full of energy and ideas, a kind of life force ... Tiller’s travels with Pong are filled with wild, eye-opening, often hilarious adventures ... a surprising, spirited, keenly observed novel, full of the crazy and the profound.
... seems at first as though it’s going to be a rowdy rollick. Its prose is jazzy and jokey. Its plot immediately takes preposterous twists and turns ... Unfortunately, My Year Abroad grows simultaneously sillier and duller the longer it goes on. Extravagant flights of fancy outstay their welcome, and irrelevant flashbacks sometimes stop the narrative in its tracks. The novel has its moments, especially in its first 100 pages. But it’s never a good sign when you finish a book wondering what on earth the author was trying to accomplish ... Tossed in with this over-the-top lampooning of racial stereotypes are brothel visits, some profuse vomiting, a near-lethal surfing escapade in Hawaii and an interminable karaoke scene in which Tiller discovers, to his amazement, that he’s a marvelous singer. There’s also a sober flashback to Pong’s Chinese childhood during the Cultural Revolution that feels as if it comes from a totally different book ... Food is central to both the Stagno and Shenzhen narratives, but it’s hard see what point Lee is making with it ... The prose, exhilarating at first, becomes more and more of a liability as the book progresses. At times it feels as if Lee is vying for a Bad Sex in Fiction Award ... Lee does excel at scene-setting ... Passages like that, with their giddily piled-up clauses, are good satirical fun. But there’s way too much nonsense and detritus to wade through in My Year Abroad to make it worth seeking them out.
Some authors might have settled for giving Tiller one memorable adventure. Mr. Lee gives him two, a bounty that is a tribute to Mr. Lee’s powers of imagination yet also shows he may have complicated his tale more than was necessary. My Year Abroad is two separate stories that don’t quite comment on one another as Mr. Lee may have intended ... The novel’s more interesting story involves Pong Lou, a chemist at a huge pharmaceutical firm ... Tiller’s China adventures have a cartoonish denouement, but Pong’s story is a powerful tale that incorporates his artist parents’ difficulties with the Red Guards during Mao’s Cultural Revolution and much more. While the prose is gorgeous throughout, Tiller uses sophisticated phrases his character is unlikely to speak ... Despite its flaws, My Year Abroad engagingly confronts questions of conspicuous consumption, identity, and privilege. The book may not be a flawless jewel, but facets of it sparkle.
Along the way, Lee spins numerous diverting narrative tangents decorated with his spirited maximalist prose, like a linguistic-savant carnival barker conning you into buying a ticket to a sideshow attraction you actually end up loving ... It’s a sort of ethnocultural role reversal that satirizes the perils of global capitalism and illuminates how the game of moneymaking can disrupt our own moral compasses, as individuals and societies, to the great detriment of an otherwise lovely planet.
Chang-rae Lee’s new novel, My Year Abroad, is, like everything he writes, considered and elegant, formal and philosophical. He’s firmly in command. He remains in command while this novel runs straight off the road and into a deep ravine. To borrow a euphemism from the world of aeronautics, this long and draggy book is a 'controlled flight into terrain' ... Reading My Year Abroad, one starts to feel, as Pete Townshend wrote in a recent Who song, 'over-full, always sated, puffed up, elated' ... Lee isn’t a humorless writer, and he surely sees some mischief here too. But he plays this all with a straight face, and the scars Tiller comes away with are real.There are good things in My Year Abroad. Pong is an appealing and original creation. The fact that Tiller, Val and Victor must mostly remain housebound for their protection gives this novel Covid-19-era resonance. Lee has earned the right to write a fluky novel without shaking our respect. Sometimes, with fiction, it’s sic biscuitus disintegratum — that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Profoundly imaginative and thrillingly virtuosic, Lee...has created an audaciously satiric, harrowing, witty, and tender variation on the archetypal hero’s journey and a fathoms-deep exploration of self, family, culture, and power ... Lee is supreme, and this high-velocity, shocking, and wise novel, avidly promoted, is emitting an irresistible magnetic force.
... action-packed ... The frenetic roller-coaster ride is impressively structured as the naive and sometimes reckless Tiller learns about trust and betrayal from his dealings with Pong, and gains a more mature understanding of his identity, culture, and values as his bond with Val develops. This literary whirlwind has Lee running on all cylinders.
This coming-of-age story is a peculiar blend...with a surrealist touch ... Pong’s recollection of his parents’ persecution during the Cultural Revolution successfully darkens the mood; even Tiller’s sexual relationship with the daughter of an acquaintance of Pong’s has a cringeworthy note to it. The novel has an ungainly, baggy feel of having taken on too much; the two threads could be two separate novels. Yet Lee is masterful from passage to passage, and Tiller is a winningly self-interrogating narrator; his relationships with both Pong and Val provoke smart riffs on ethnicity (he’s one-eighth Asian), accomplishment, love, and family. A sage study in how readily we’re undone by our appetites.
