The Boat Rocker
Ha Jin
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
The Boat Rocker
Ha Jin
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
...a strange, intense novel from Ha Jin about the glories and limits of the freedom of the press.
At once hilarious and sobering.
As much a polemic as a work of fiction, The Boat Rocker describes an Orwellian world in which a single questionable judgment, coupled with a stubborn adherence to principle, exposes Danlin to life-shaking consequences.
I imagine the number of novels that employ sardonic commentary regarding the exploitation of 9/11 by authors and political entities is a very short list, if not nonexistent. Jin pulls no punches.
The humor in The Boat Rocker largely stems from Feng’s gleeful mocking of the grandiose claims of Yan and various party hacks, not least through his quoting of purple passages from the manuscript.
Throughout The Boat Rocker, Jin’s prose will strike the reader as uninspired and rather workmanlike. The odd humorous flourish proves delightful, and prompts one to entertain notions of a largely dormant literary sensibility on the author’s part.
Set in New York, Ha Jin’s new novel, The Boat Rocker, takes place 'a week before the fourth anniversary of 9/11.' Much of the novel’s power derives from the uncanny parallels between the issues faced by its central figure, a truth-seeking online journalist in the era of Hu Jintao and George W Bush, and all of us, in our Trumpian moment, as we struggle with its penchant for 'alternative facts'.
...the narrative framework is fertile ground for Jin’s brilliant and nuanced political and social observations.
Unfortunately, Ha Jin seems less interested in writing a novel than a screed taking aim at the various permutations of Chinese censorship.
Where The Boat Rocker fails is in delivering any sense of narrative tension. Long-time readers of Jin know better than to expect a potboiler of political suspense that is neatly tied up with a bow. At the same time, it’s hard not to wish Jin had done a little bit more with the possibilities: distrust between the countries, between the man and woman, between publisher and author. When the end result is a book that feels more like the fictional Love and Death in September than a Ha Jin novel, it feels like a lost opportunity..