WAITING by Ha Jin

The title of Ha Jin's Waiting succinctly expresses the book's theme. Lin Kong, a doctor in a city hospital in China, is ashamed of his unattractive wife Shuyu and her tiny deformed feet that were bound as a child. She and their daughter Hua live in the country, where Lin visits them every summer. Meanwhile, Lin has struck up a platonic but loving relationship with the head nurse Manna at the hospital. Each year when Lin returns home, Shuyu agrees to a divorce but then reneges in court. Finally, after 18 years, the law allows Lin to divorce her without her permission. Of course, by this time, the spark has gone out of his relationship with Manna. The irony of the title is that all three main characters are waiting for something, but once that something materializes, it's anti-climactic. The reader does a lot of waiting, too, for something tragic to happen, but when it does, it's a bit of a surprise. Still, like the characters, the reader realizes at the end that the waiting was the best part.