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A Person of Interest

3.42 of 5 stars 3.42 · rating details · 585 ratings · 169 reviews

From an acclaimed novelist, an emotionally complex and riveting story of suspicion, innocence, and regret

When a mail bomb explodes in the campus office next door, Lee, an Asian American math professor at a second-tier university in the Midwest, comes under suspicion. The authorities believe he may be the infamous brain bomber, an elusive terrorist whose primary targets a...more

Hardcover, 356 pages

Published January 31st 2008 by Viking Adult (first published January 1st 2008)

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Mar 19, 2009 jo rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: mike, simon

Shelves: im-emigration-post-colonial, asian-american

this is jhumpa lahiri meets zadie smith (look what you've done, jhumpa and zadie! turned a whole generation of women novelists to your stark, in the former case, and bleakly humorous, in the latter, demolition of the multiple barriers the human psyche erects to keep itself looking normal) meets dostoevsky. seriously. what a tour de force. susan choi takes the concept of "scene" so seriously that her scenes turn into long long chapters, even when all she describes is a trip from home to campus. t...more

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Dec 30, 2008 Mommalibrarian rated it 1 of 5 stars

I got to page 133 out of 356. At this point I know that the story centers on a man of unknown oriental ancestry who is very uncomfortable with every aspect of his life. I knew that within a few pages of beginning. This is demonstrated in the present, recalled in the past and thought of when other characters have the first person floor. There does not appear to be a plot and there has been no action or progress toward any action. I did not find any foreshadowing that there would be any change for...more

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Mar 23, 2008 Erik Simon rated it 5 of 5 stars

I think Susan Choi is a spectacular writer; she crafts some of the finest sentences of all the young writers working today. I have to confess I'm not a fan of minimalism, and Choi gives these lush, long sentences that are a delight to read. What's more, I like the moral ambiguity of this book; the protagonist is not the easiest guy to like, at least not at first, and I wish we had more books in which the protagonist weren't so perfect and wonderful. A great read.

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Aug 13, 2009 Marvin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: midwest

This AIR finalist by a former Pulitzer Prize finalist begins with the fatal bombing of a mathematician's office at a midwestern university in a small college town. The story is told from the perspective (though not in the voice) of the Asian immigrant mathematician whose office is right next door & who is interviewed & investigated by the FBI as "a person of Interest," which leads him to be viewed by the community as a suspect. Despite the subject, this is no thriller; it's not even a pa...more

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Oct 15, 2008 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this! There's a thriller/suspense aspect to it that moved me through the book much faster than I expected, balancing the sometimes rigid, sometimes austere prose. I am very interested to read another book by Choi to see if those sentences are how she writes, or if, as I suspect, they were a flawless depiction of the thought processes of the main character, a mathematics professor. (See-- I just wrote "mathematics" instead of "math" because Lee, the professor, would prefer it.)

W...more

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Aug 14, 2008 Meghan rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really loved AMERICAN WOMAN and this was kind of a let-down. The prose is really, really dense--entire pages without a paragraph break, lots of internal musing-but-not-searching. On top of that the protag is just not much fun to be around--it makes the plot believable, you can see how awkward he is around others, you can see how upsetting his temper is--but damn if I just hated being in his head for as long as I had to be. I would say up until like page 200 I was constantly ready to put this b...more

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Mar 15, 2008 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2008

For the day and a half or so that I spent reading this book last weekend, very little got done in my home. When I finally finished it on Sunday evening, all the subtle indicators of a misspent weekend were evident - dirty dishes in the sink, heaps of dirty laundry, piles of assorted tax-related documents still needing to be corraled into some semblance of order, and two less than gruntled kitties, whose reproaches were getting progressively more vocal. Having written that, I realise that saying...more For the day and a half or so that I spent reading this book last weekend, very little got done in my home. When I finally finished it on Sunday evening, all the subtle indicators of a misspent weekend were evident - dirty dishes in the sink, heaps of dirty laundry, piles of assorted tax-related documents still needing to be corraled into some semblance of order, and two less than gruntled kitties, whose reproaches were getting progressively more vocal. Having written that, I realise that saying a book is more interesting than household chores might be considered damning it with faint praise, so let me clarify - that's not what I mean - this book is engrossing, and you may find it an irresistible time-sink.

It's been widely, and generally favorably, reviewed. I think the praise is well-deserved. Susan Choi writes beautifully, and was remarkably effective in making me care about Professor Lee, the central character, despite his many flaws and almost total lack of empathy. The basic plot outline - Lee comes under suspicion in the investigation of the death of a colleague who died following a Unabomber-style attack - is sketched in most reviews of the book, so I won't dwell on it here. The plot is not really the book's strong point - it is a little haphazard, with some aspects that don't seem completely plausible. But that hardly matters, it really just serves to provide the framework for Choi's in-depth, fascinating, and completely convincing character study of her flawed protagonist.

In the novel, Lee is a math professor; I spent four years of graduate school studying mathematical statistics. At certain points in the book I would find myself thinking - "she's exaggerating - nobody could be that lacking in empathy". But then, I'd do a mental rundown of my own class roster, and come up with at least two or three characters who were even weirder. Graduate study in the mathematical sciences does not, after all, tend to attract the raving extroverts of this world. So I think that Choi does get her character essentially right; her father being a math professor was presumably of some help in this regard.

A final note: the book is highly reminiscent of Heinrich Böll's 1974 novel, "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum", adapted for film in 1975 by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta (and later as a 1984 made for TV movie in the U.S., starring Marlo Thomas and Kris Kristofferson). Both books focus on a central character whose natural reserve and desire for privacy result in demonization and suspicion by the press and the authorities. I had a summer job in Berlin in 1975, and there was much lively debate about Böll's book and the film adaptation. One can only dream of a similarly engaged debate in the U.S.; Choi's book should at least provoke readers to think about the questions involved.

I highly recommend "A Person of Interest". (less)

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Jan 16, 2009 Alex Csicsek rated it 3 of 5 stars

A decent contemporary novel by Pulitzer Prize-nominated (though not for this book) author Susan Choi which explores the power of regret and guilt through the eyes of a Midwestern mathematics professor who gets caught up in an FBI investigation.

When Lee's despised colleague becomes the victim of a mail bomb, his lonely world starts to fall in on itself. His strange ways and little fibs catch the attention of the investigators on the case. Despite having never touched explosives in his lifetime, L...more

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May 30, 2011 Ms.pegasus rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those interested in fiction about alienation, academic life,

Shelves: fiction, suspense

The central character, Dr. Li, is not a likable person. As he recalls his past two marriages, his estranged daughter, his youth, and his colleagues, we see a complex and conflicted academic, near the end of his career, and the many unresolved relationships in his life. The writing is at once intense, complex, and multi-layered.

Throw in the plot elements, and this book is riveting. Allusions to authorities empowered to pursue their misplaced suspicions and the paranoia created by domestic terrori...more

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May 06, 2010 Timothy Hallinan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved Susan Choi's first novel, THE FOREIGN STUDENT, but my reaction to this one is more complicated. It's about an immigrant mathematics professor (probably Korean, although it's never actually specified) who is injured in a bomb blast that kills the professor in the office next to his own. Much of the book is backstory, and beautifully told, lovingly detailed, layered in ways that produce surprising perspectives on events we already think we understand. When Professor Lee receives a letter f...more

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Aug 11, 2009 Khaya rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Khaya by: the TABBIEs book club

This book had a lot of potential; unfortunately, verbosity and excessive detail and rumination got in the way. The basic plot was thriller-like – a bomb kills misanthropic Professor Lee’s colleague, and events conspire so that Professor Lee is falsely implicated as a possible culprit. There’s also a backstory: Professor Lee’s first wife, Aileen, was originally married to a graduate school friend of his; the circumstances surrounding Lee and Aileen’s initial union were ugly and became uglier as A...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Fvck rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2012

Fast-paced yet rambling, a page-turner that's imminently skimmable, a thriller that's horribly plotted....How to describe this book. Reading it made me quite anxious and uncomfortable, but I thoroughly appreciated and respected that feeling and loved the book all the more for it. The story is thoroughly engrossing, and Choi is a captivating writer with a sophisticated outlook on her characters and the world at large.

But I had two main issues. First, it's not at all about what you think it's abo...more Fast-paced yet rambling, a page-turner that's imminently skimmable, a thriller that's horribly plotted....How to describe this book. Reading it made me quite anxious and uncomfortable, but I thoroughly appreciated and respected that feeling and loved the book all the more for it. The story is thoroughly engrossing, and Choi is a captivating writer with a sophisticated outlook on her characters and the world at large.

But I had two main issues. First, it's not at all about what you think it's about. I knew it was inspired by the Unabomber plot and the Wen Ho Lee saga, and the flap copy implied it was going to be a DeLillo-style thriller about mistaken identity and the tenseness of contemporary race relations. This was not the case. The whole bombing plot seemed to happen offstage, and the entire race piece, though it claimed to loom large, was pretty much entirely marginalized and incidental -- the power of the book would be not at all diminished if the character happened to be white. Thankfully, this doesn't matter. Without giving anything away, this is not so much a thriller as a good old-fashioned melodrama about love, betrayal, loyalty, family, and what it means to grow up and grow old. Lee is a delightfully unlikable creation and I was glad to lose a DeLilloesque allegory or cypher novel if it meant getting to spend time bumbling along with him. I cringed and thrilled to follow him back and forth through his poast and through all his anxieties over the ages. He's a selfish, awkward, prickly, incompetent, insecure rageaholic, and you root for him the entire time -- a true triumph.

Second issue: this book needs a decent editor! I finished this in like 2 days but it still felt much too long. Choi writes beautifully and very fluidly, but there is so much description and scene-setting that isn't needed. I skimmed constantly, and flipped testily past the countless 40-line descriptions of highways, mountains, stains on a dive bar countertop, etc. etc. etc. to get to the true beating, powerful heart of the novel. Skimming is not typically how one best enjoys a thriller about domestic terrorism and the hunt for a serial killer, and it broke up the inexorable, chilling pace of the novel in a way that was to Choi's detriment, especially as the bomb plot picked up later in the book. I would gladly have given this five stars if the constant needless descriptions had been cut out, leaving me with a leaner, more relentlessly disturbing, more fast-paced, and more unforgettable read.

Cocktail party tidbit: Choi is the wife of the current New York Times food critic, Pete Wells. At the worst moments it seemed she'd picked up his writing style -- Wells is in love with his own words, with clever scene-setting, with doing anything but getting to the value judgement about the restaurant itself. (less)

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Jan 12, 2011 Patsy rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: mystery/literature

At the outset, Professor Lee is shown to be a competitive and insecure man, due in part to having an excellent (but not the best) mathematical mind, and because he is an immigrant from a never-named Asian country (probably Vietnam). In spite of his fine intelligence and princely looks, Lee never feels fully equal to any community to which he is a party. A tedious self-absorbed guy, I thought at the outset of the book, I didn’t think I’d make this whole trip with Professor Lee.
When an academic...more At the outset, Professor Lee is shown to be a competitive and insecure man, due in part to having an excellent (but not the best) mathematical mind, and because he is an immigrant from a never-named Asian country (probably Vietnam). In spite of his fine intelligence and princely looks, Lee never feels fully equal to any community to which he is a party. A tedious self-absorbed guy, I thought at the outset of the book, I didn’t think I’d make this whole trip with Professor Lee.
When an academic star and young computer guru, receives a mail bomb, which detonates in the office next door, the novel, A Person Of Interest becomes all about how Lee is thrown by this. At times poignant, tragic, humorous, pathetic and annoying, much of the book is about Lee and his usually artless ways of dealing with grief, suspicion, place, relationships, trust, and his identity as an American. He is a painfully isolated character, and much too much of the story lacks dialogue, relies heavily on description and flashbacks. What compelled me to keep going, and believe me there are many challenges, is the amazing richness of Choi’s writing and a fascination with her chutzpah in doing a Unabomber themed novel.
Who is the crazy person doing sending incendiary devices to college professors?
How did Lee get inadvertently drawn into it? What characteristics of his made him a witless person of interest in this terrible crime? (An urgent need to control, his discomfort with and distrust of people.)
However, many page-long paragraphs. Use of some language I had never encountered before. “Misprision” comes to mind. Too academic, I think, in places. Too slow. Choi introduces a new character late in the story, one who probably needed to be included, but I am not convinced the timing and location of his introduction furthered the narrative. The book is too long. However, by the end of the novel, Lee is a fully sympathetic character. Was getting there worth the trip? Would I read Susan Choi again?
The answer to both questions is a qualified yes because the character of Lee is worthy of our attention and Choi is an author of interest.
(less)

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Aug 13, 2010 David Carr rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

This is an extraordinary novel, progressively more complex, superbly written, and deeply satisfying to complete. Its protagonist does not draw empathy or engagement -- he is painfully isolated and indifferent through most of the novel -- until his entire life is revealed to us and he finally rescues himself from hollowness and isolation. As I experienced Susan Choi's subtle and revealing sentences, her immense illuminated paragraphs, and her intimate nuances of diction and situation, her mastery...more

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Jun 30, 2009 Kellyann rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Francine Prose writes that Choi's novel "combin[es:] the unhurried pleasures of certain classics with the jittery tensions of more recent fiction," and that is exactly true. The book plumbs identity, cultural awareness, immigrant experiences, parent-child relationships, and professional competition (among many other things), without being about any of them. It is about the story it tells. And the story it tells is about a professor of mathematics grazed by the drama of a campaign of anti-technol...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Anthea Ilpide rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a highly interesting and extremely well-written book, fast-paced except in a few rare places which I admit could have been cut down. One of the most compelling things is that the plot is actually based on real-life events, most importantly the story of Ted Kaczynski, a PhD Mathematician, social critic and Professor at Berkeley University of California who eventually became a terrorist known as the 'Unabomber'. As a result of his Marxist-inspired beliefs, Kaczynski slowly began to reject...more This is a highly interesting and extremely well-written book, fast-paced except in a few rare places which I admit could have been cut down. One of the most compelling things is that the plot is actually based on real-life events, most importantly the story of Ted Kaczynski, a PhD Mathematician, social critic and Professor at Berkeley University of California who eventually became a terrorist known as the 'Unabomber'. As a result of his Marxist-inspired beliefs, Kaczynski slowly began to reject technological advances as contrary to human progress, since those advances could be used for violent and even lethal purposes, as exemplified by the advent of the nuclear bomb during World War II. The only way forward for Kaczynski was to target those brilliant minds who spearheaded technological advances, i.e. researchers and academics, hence his nickname of 'Unabomber' as he sent out mail containing bombs to university professors and other people whose work he deemed dangerous for the future of humanity. Kaczynski was eventually arrested for his brutal use of anarchist beliefs to justify the bombings, which he declared were the only way society would take heed and turn away from technological 'progess' (he had ceased to believe in debate and peaceful social reform). He is now serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and it is his story that forms the overall story arc of Susan Choi's novel.

There are other historical and cultural references in this very rich book, especially those concerning McCarthyism and the hysterical anti-Communist mindset of that era, as the protagonist, a Mathematics professor called Lee, is of Asian descent and therefore comes under strong suspicion during those troubled years of American history. He relates his run-in with the authorities, which considered him more suspicious than white Americans on account of his origins, due to the prominence of China as a Communist country.

Mixing real historical events with fiction, Choi weaves a tale of love, failed ambition and desire for redemption which constantly reminds the reader that the personal sometimes really IS political, as her protagonist Lee arouses the FBI's suspicions for two main reasons: his Asian background AND his inability to mourn his colleague publicly (that colleague is the book's 'Unabomber''s victim in the opening pages). In other words, this book exposes the injustice of racial profiling and the cult of collective expressions of grief, if one can put it that way. Indeed, Lee never liked his colleague Hendley, and he is therefore unable and unwilling to fake grief by going to the memorial organized for him by the university. That combined with the fact that the two professors were known to have antagonized each other time and again seems enough for the FBI to direct its attention to Lee.

Except there is also a THIRD reason, which is also the one that gives credence to the idea that the personal is political in this novel, as Lee lies to FBI agents about one piece of mail, a letter from Lewis Gaither. Gaither and Lee were best friends in graduate school, but ended up falling out completely when Lee stole Gaither's wife Aileen when she was still pregnant with her and Gaither's first child, a son they decided to call John. Gaither writes to Lee after a silence of 3 decades, and the letter is interpreted by Lee as a taunt and an insult, a way for Gaither of taking revenge on the man who stole his wife. This is the reason why he lies to the FBI, saying he threw that letter away in order to spare himself the humiliation of other people finding out that the only personal correspondence he's recently received is an unfriendly and unwelcome one. This seemingly benign lie transforms itself into a major incident which underpins the whole plot, as the FBI finds out that Lee lied and misconstrue his lack of forthcoming cooperation as proof of his having something to hide. Lee thereby becomes a 'person of interest', which differs from a 'suspect' in the sense that they are not charging him with anything at that stage. Even when Lee finally tells them the truth about Gaither and him, the agents are unconvinced and force Lee to take a polygraph test in order to ascertain whether or not he is still lying to them. The results are conclusive and declare Lee has been truthful.

While all these events are unfolding, Lee is constantly looking back on various periods of his life, from his graduate school days with Gaither, to his meeting and subsequent affair with Aileen, and perhaps most importantly, the divorce crisis he created, which resulted in Aileen losing custody of John and a son growing up without his real mother. Indeed, Gaither took John away from Aileen and Lee did not try to stop it; in fact he welcomed this vengeful move as he had no desire to raise his former friend's son. Lee's betrayal of his friend seems even worse when seen in the light of his inability to stand by the woman he betrayed him for: he could at the very least have attempted to get John to come and see his mother before she died on a hospital bed without having ever known her son... And that's the problem with this book, and the reason why I can only give it 3 stars: for all the fine and acute psychological insight Choi puts into her protagonist, he is almost never likable for more than 5 pages, since his loneliness and estrangement from his daughter as well as other people seem largely of his own doing...

One does however feel pity and even anger on his behalf when Lee is confronted with the FBI's abrupt declaration that they have re-examined his polygraph and found it inconclusive due to his ethnic background: apparently, lie-detectors do not work on Asian and Middle Eastern people because they have a different ethical make-up/understanding of the truth as relative or whichever way they try to explain it to an outraged Lee (whose day began with being asked to take some 'time off' teaching until the FBI case and rumors 'blow over')!!! I thought this episode in the book constituted a powerful and very apt indictment of the practice of racial profiling, one that resonates even today...

But then again the ending ruins all this by offering a kind of deus ex machina resolution to the question of who is the 'Brain Bomber' and who recognized him from the kind of language he used in his anti-technological society Manifesto, therefore tipping off the FBI and leading to his arrest... indeed, the answer is just dropped on the reader without any kind of build-up or prior hint/indication as to that person being guilty all along... there is only one word for this: ANTI-CLIMACTIC!!! (less)

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Susan Choi's American Woman (**** Nov/Dec 2003), a Pulitzer Prize finalist, fictionalized the abduction of Patty Hearst; here, she successfully tackles terrorism in an alienated America. Praised by the New York Times Book Review as "combining the unhurried pleasures of certain classics with the jittery tensions of more recent fiction," A Person of Interest is more notable for its acute psychological insight and focus on one man's discovery of himself than for its whodunit elements. A few reviewe

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Oct 18, 2009 Derek Emerson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-books-read

Reading Susan Choi's novel American Woman made me anxious to read more. But if you are like me, approaching a second work by an author is a bit scary. Probably like a second date (though fortunately my long marriage makes that hard to remember) -- you hope those good "vibes" from the first date do not turn out to be misguided. Alas, second dates and second books are sometimes a disappointment.

Not so with Susan Choi's novels (I'm guessing the same with dates since she is married). A Person of Int...more Reading Susan Choi's novel American Woman made me anxious to read more. But if you are like me, approaching a second work by an author is a bit scary. Probably like a second date (though fortunately my long marriage makes that hard to remember) -- you hope those good "vibes" from the first date do not turn out to be misguided. Alas, second dates and second books are sometimes a disappointment.

Not so with Susan Choi's novels (I'm guessing the same with dates since she is married). A Person of Interest builds on the same model as American Woman where Choi adds a fictional side to a real life event. First it was the Patty Hearst story, and this time the Unabomber meets up with Wen Ho Lee who was falsely accused of espionage. But Choi is even less interested in tying into real life in this book than with American Woman. Choi's interest is in how the truth can appear to be a malleable substance, but in the end the truth appears as an objective source around which we all revolve.

I'm not sure Choi would buy into this thought, but that is how the book plays out. Her main character, Professor Lee, is an undistinguished math professor close to retiring from an undistinguished Midwest school when his "hotshot" colleague is killed by a mail bomb. Although slightly injured himself in the blast, Lee emerges as a "person of interest," as the FBI struggle to piece together the truth. As we watch this emerge we step back into Lee's graduate career, his two failed marriages, his estranged daughter, and his own sleeplike existence in life.

While the FBI try to make their theories work, and fail, Lee is brought into focus as someone who has tried to make life work the way he wants, and fails. The clearest example is the infant child his first wife has with her first husband, although she was soon after having an affair with Lee. He refuses to see this child as part of their existence and his wife allows the child to be taken by her ex-husband. Lee's reality is that the child does not exist, but of course the truth is the child does exist and Lee's attempt to alter reality fails miserably. In addition, like the FBI he cannot shake his own theory of the bombing when he discovers the person he is sure is the bomber has been dead for many years. When reality does not conform to our thinking, we try to ignore it. We attempt to define the truth, when in fact the challenge in life is to live with the truths we are faced with.

The FBI run into the same problem with handling a truth different than what they expect. Lee could work out so well as the Unabomber that they are desperate to make it work, despite the fact (truth) that Lee offers them little hope. In the end, even the Unabomber (here called the "Brain Bomber") is someone who attempts to alter reality in part by creating his own truths. This is not to imply that reality and truth are identical, but in this case the character's inability to face reality does correspond with their inability to handle truth.

It is not often I wish for more writing -- great writers are able to convey a great deal with minimum amount of exposition. However, Choi introduces some characters which would be interesting to hear more about as they interact with the story. The abandoned infant son reemerges with a new name (Mark) and the dawning realization that his past as told to him is not the truth (more examples of people, in this case Christians, trying to alter the truth and failing). He is introduced and she creates as strong storyline and character with him, but the sudden ending leaves more unanswered questions. The same goes for Lee's estranged daughter who appears on the last page with a wave of hello at the airport. But this need for more is not just a prurient interest in how these characters turn out. All of these characters are now on a search for truth and seeing more of that journey would be interesting.

Choi's characters are always well drawn and interesting, no matter what their role in the story. Her writing is quick moving, yet thoughtful. She manages to pull off a lot with little action, and she puts forward a great deal of information without falling back on soliloquies to pull it off. Plus, while her writing explores some big topics, she knows how to create a great storyline which pulls the reader in to stay.

She'll be on my campus reading in just a few weeks so I look forward to seeing what she has to say at her reading. I know I'll be moving on to another one of her novels soon.(less)

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Nov 29, 2008 Sarah Messick-Milone rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

This novel is an intriguing, intimate portrait of a man who does not seem to know how to relate intimately to others, even those he most deeply loves. Choi captures the isolation of a shy, anxious, and often arrogant man in often wry prose, marked with vivid images. The image of Lee's "many chambered anxieties" and the scene in which everything at home "seemed to have adopted a posture of conflict" against him seemed particularly apt. But by far the best writing in the novel surrounds Lee's firs...more

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Jul 04, 2009 Donna rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-fiction

I selected this book partially because it had been billed as a "literary mystery." Unfortunately, it had annoyingly little mystery and a whole lot of pomposity that I wouldn't exactly call literary. The book, primarily about the life choices, judgments, and unremarkableness of its protagonist--a Japanese math professor--had a convoluted, intertwined mish-mash of character interactions it called a plot. I found it excruciatingly dull at times. Most of the book takes place inside people's heads an...more

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Jun 13, 2010 Paul (formerly known as Current) rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

Using the Unabomber as a backdrop, Choi skillfully creates an extended character study of Lee, a emigre and aging professor at a Midwestern college. Although well-written and interesting in parts, as a story this fails in a few ways. First, the plot is almost entirely secondary to the character of Lee and although Lee sheds some light on the character of the unabomber, it is not intriguing enough to capture the reader or act as a mirror. Second, Lee's character is fairly boring and unlikable in...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars

Choi's A Person of Interest is a meticulous, deliberate, and beautifully written character study; it's also a low-level thriller with an absorbing plot and convincing psychological complexity, and, in an American sense, a novel of our times. Stylistically, the novel is dominated at times by long paragraphs of highly accomplished descriptive prose, and in this sense it's density done well. Those who work in academia will appreciate some of the observations of university life (regarding his office...more

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Apr 22, 2010 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Midway through this novel, I abandoned it because it was a difficult read, and I wasn't able to properly concentrate due to personal issues. However, I picked it up again two reads later, and I enjoyed it.

It's extremely well written with complicated relationships; it has an intricate plot; and it will challenge your knowledge of vocabulary, for sure.

When a bombing at a college campus kills a charismatic, popular computer science professor, an older math colleague is implicated and becomes a pe...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Mary rated it 3 of 5 stars

In Person of Interest, we're reminded of the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski and his anti-technology rampage ended in the 1990s) and Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-born American scientist who was accused of stealing secrets about the USA's nuclear arsenal in 1999.

In painfully exquisite detail, Choi picks away at the unraveling of Lee's life as his colleagues, his neighbors and the media, quite unjustifiably, treat him as the prime suspect in the bombing.

A parallel plot involving Gaither's absconding with his...more

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Jan 17, 2011 Susan Odetta rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well-crafted character study of the quintessential absent-minded professor, tenured math PhD in a mediocre university, indeterminately Asian, an outsider unloved by his students, the faculty, his scattered family. There is a somewhat sordid romantic history, 2 former wives, one dead, and a grown daughter who has moved far away. He lives alone. He has no friends. Until a bomb blows up the wildly popular math professor in the office next to his. Everything changes. First I intensely disliked the m...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Isw2w rated it 5 of 5 stars

The author does a good job in developing the character of Prof. Lee; she is much less successful in developing the other characters and some of the characters are merely "sketches." I guess I really felt sorry for the professor. The main character felt ignored and invisible in his life until the bombing occurred and then he was thrust into the limelight which he detested.

The writing at times is overly descriptive and complicated. I thought the ending "wrapped" up things much too neatly. I don't...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Martha rated it 3 of 5 stars

It took me a while to get into this book. It centers around an aging mathematics professor who is a witness to a bombing on campus. He is extremely paranoid after this incident and makes some unwise choices regarding information and the FBI as a result. Other than the bombing, the first 2/3 of the book is spent on character development and background story. I must admit I got a little bored after a while when nothing really seemed to be happening. I also got annoyed with the professor and his pa...more

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Aug 17, 2009 Heather rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was interesting because of the main character, a reticent mathematician who had immigrated from (Vietnam, I assume - she was cagey about this and kept calling him Asian, while careful to point out that he was not Chinese but from a people victimized by the Chinese.) He was really vivid and well drawn, which kept me going..the book sort of fell apart in the third act though, both with a chapter from the pov of an incidental character who felt more 'written', and then with the 'thriller' endi...more

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Dec 07, 2010 Aimee rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

The first part of the book concludes with the protagonist’s advisor telling him that the best mathematician should win. This book demonstrates that academia and its many eccentric rules/social mores can be appealing to the average reader.

Indeed, Choi’s dense sentences, which are replete with delicious detail, pull in the reader and make him/her riveted by the culture of said environment. The author’s skilled character development allows her ensemble cast to make bold decisions form the very beg...more

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Dec 04, 2010 Philip rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: directed-reading

A very interesting look into the psyche and life of a man suspected of involvement in Unabomber-like crimes. The protagonist, Lee, professor of mathematics at a "second-tier Midwestern university," is more or less reconciled to his mediocre existence when all Hell blows loose in the campus office next to his. The aftermath sets in motion a period of intense turmoil during which Lee digs deeply into his past as a young immigrant to America and his tentative friendships and first loves while in gr...more

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About Susan Choi

Susan Choi was born in South Bend, Indiana, and raised there and in Houston, Texas. She studied literature at Yale and writing at Cornell, and worked for several years as a fact-checker for The New Yorker.

Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.

With David Remnick she c...more

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