PRAISE FOR
American Woman
“[American Woman] takes a hard-eyed look at American idealism, and yet its imaginative abundance, its fascination with self-invention, and its portrayal of the landscape as a living, breathing presence provide a quintessentially American sense of possibility.”
—The New Yorker
“A brilliant read. . . . Astonishing in its honesty and confidence. American Woman is a haunting book.”
—Denver Post
“With wit and empathy . . . American Woman first and foremost examines a young radical’s eroding moral certainty. But it also mines the tragicomic elements inherent in good intentions gone murderously awry. Its great achievement is the tale of the shrill, the obnoxious, the armed and dangerous told in a wondrously beautiful voice.”
—Boston Globe
“American Woman is a riveting, deeply affecting portrait of a young antiwar radical and her turbulent times. With uncompromising grace and mastery, Susan Choi renders the intimate moments that bring to life a tale of prodigious sweep. It is a beautifully wrought, exceptionally powerful novel.”
—Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize—winning author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake
“An artful, insightful meditation on the radical impulse. . . . Jenny’s wrenching struggle to come to terms with what she’s done makes the book resonate with compassion and regret.”
—Dan Cryer, Newsday
“Extraordinary generosity and grace. . . . The author, perhaps as successfully and as powerfully as anyone has, makes us understand how it felt, what it was like. . . . [An] assured, accomplished work.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“A tightly plotted thriller that is also an imaginative thought experiment conducted with the past. . . . Brilliant and often hilarious. . . . Choi has a whole continent, as well as an epoch, in her sights.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Prepare to be held hostage by Susan Choi’s mesmerizing American Woman.”
—Vanity Fair
“A hypnotic, winding route through the scorched emotional landscape of 1974. . . . Choi’s prose radiates intelligence as she traces circles around Jenny and Pauline—near enough that you can feel their warmth, but not so close that you’d ever nail them down.”
—Village Voice
“Susan Choi in this second novel proves herself a natural—a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability. I couldn’t put American Woman down, and wanted when I finished it to do nothing but read it again.”
—Joan Didion
“Choi is a gifted prose stylist and composer of lovely, lingering paragraphs. . . . But even more than that, American Woman is a thoughtful, meditative interrogation of . . . history and politics, of power and racism, and, finally, of radicalism.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Riveting. . . . Choi has the rare gift of bringing such notorious moments of history back to life and making them altogether new.”
—Vogue
“Few writers since Graham Greene have brought such tender, insightful, poetic, intelligent, darkly comic writing to the political thriller. I have to admit this novel made me frantic with suspense—all I wanted to do was jump in and save its unforgettable protagonist from her excruciating destiny.”
—Francisco Goldman
“Masterfully plotted. . . . American Woman is that rarest of creations, a political novel that gives equal weight to its characters’ inner and outer lives.”
—Laura Miller, Salon.com
“Brilliant. . . . Choi’s insightful understanding, vivid description, lyrical use of language, and deft dialogue make it an overall reading pleasure.”
—Oregonian
“An amazing sense of control . . . [and] a compelling exactness. . . . Fantasy confronts fantasy in the confusion that gives rise to love, to hatred, to politics. And to gunshots.”
—Los Angeles Times
“What I find so genuinely exhilarating about Choi’s project is her old-fashioned intrepidness, her desire to plunder history without apology in order to recover its heart.”
—Minna Proctor, Bookforum
“Enthralling. . . . It is Choi’s skill at getting inside the heads of her protagonists that gives the novel its particular, unsettling appeal [and] . . . grainy psychological depth and texture.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Choi crafts complex, believable characters whose lives intersect with American politics over issues of loss and betrayal, economics and identity. How it all comes together in an engrossing and emotive story is testament to Choi’s deft narration . . . [and] unwavering, original voice.”
—Library Journal
“Intellectually provocative and vividly imagined.”
—Kirkus Reviews