I found Native Speaker on a “Best books set in New York City” list soon after finishing The Goldfinch. I was craving more memories of the City and sorely missing my own time there last summer. I started reading it soon after.
Native Speaker doesn’t deliver super strongly on the “reminiscing about NYC” front, though I enjoyed the short descriptions of Queens and shorter ones of Manhattan that appear whenever the protagonist is having an existential crisis.
However, Native Speaker is a thoughtful and engaging book in its own right. The protagonist, Henry Park, is a first generation Korean-American, whose father immigrated from Korea to run a grocery business in NYC. Park works as a spy and the skills required by the occupation — quietness, assimilation — are repeatedly noted in relation to Park’s upbringing and Korean tradition. At one point Lee writes, “I had to show thee staff that I possessed a native intelligence but not so great a one or of a certain kind that it impeded my sense of duty.”
Park is assigned to spy on John Kwang, a rising Korean-American politician, who becomes a benevolent father figure to Park. The novel often touches upon themes of parenthood, family, and marriage, while considering mulling on the meaning of “professional success” and the American Dream.
I’ve read a few Asian-American/Asian Diaspora novels over the last year or two. Native Speaker features familiar themes of filial piety and cultural dissonance but its unique plot makes it stand out.
The last few chapters of the book have many twists and turns but I couldn’t help but come away feeling like I didn’t have closure — at the end of the novel Park appears to be caught in as much turmoil as before, though Lee starts to point to an improving marriage. But then again, may be the lack of closure is the most real representation of what could have happened.
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