Book Review: East is East (1990) by T.C. Boyle

This is the final review in the "Books About Asian Women" series. These are the previous entries: Memoirs of a Geisha, The Joy Luck Club, and Shanghai Girls.

Although East is East was meant to be my final review in the books about Asian women series, it's not really about Asian women. Rather, it is about a half-Japanese, half-American sailor named Hiro who, in attempt to escape a Japanese society that won't accept him, jumps ship for the expected greener pastures of America. He instead finds himself a fugitive on an island off the coast of Georgia, which is the location of a writer's and artist's retreat. His attempt to survive and escape from the island is probably the funniest and most entertaining part of this novel. One part that was laugh out loud funny to me is when he goes into a convenience store and, after making his purchase, bows and says obscenities, thinking it to be polite, because of what he saw in a Clint Eastwood movie. As well, he is able to stay at a wealthy, elderly woman's home because she mistakes him for a composer that she saw in Atlanta. Unfortunately, these are the best parts about this novel.

Later, he is helped by one of the writers, a mid-twenties woman who is dating the son of the retreat owner. She leaves him food and offers to let him stay in her writer's cabin. However, her intentions are not as pure as they seem. She has been having writer's block and is hoping her experience with Hiro can help her along her way to win the Pulitzer; in fact, when she thinks he has left her, she says "to hell with him." She is also quite childish in her envy of a former classmate who has been much more successful in the writing game than she. "All she writes about is sex!" she says. And perhaps this is unfair of me, but I can't help but feel like her experience must reflect that of the author, T.C. Boyle. Is it a sign that you don't really have a story that you're itching to tell if one of your main characters is a writer who is struggling to find something to write about?

The novel largely revolves around the struggle of these two; we aren't really brought into the struggles and desires of the surrounding characters. When we are, though, it is not central to the plot. Thus, the only character I feel any sympathy for is Hiro, making at least half the book something I don't care about. And when the reader does get to follow him, it seems like just one long chain of suffering and fighting to survive. It was not very enjoyable to read; if not for my resolve to finish it wouldn't have been. It has no redeeming value in terms of history or culture that the previous novels in the series do. If it does have a side benefit somewhere, it might be in the vocabulary one picks up. It was as if the author had a heart-felt need to prove himself through his vocabulary. But I feel like I can safely make the recommendation to skip East is East.