I'd probably give this book three and half stars if I could. (Oh wait, I can, it's my blog!) It's interesting and different from anything I've read in a while. It really delves into the American immigrant experience both in 1908 and 2008. While the times certainly have changed, the longing for home, the slightly unsettled feeling, and the loneliness are all quite the same.
Hemon uses the narrator and his subject to explore a realm of being in a place without really knowing it, and the disconnect that comes from having motivations and experiences totally different some someone else, to include the basic building blocks of personality (in this case founded in nationality).
With that said, I didn't really like all the jumping around done between the two distinct stories. While the stories switched off by chapters, they sometimes intermingled in the narrator's chapter within paragraphs. I see how Hemon was trying to more closely tie these two experiences than in other chapters, but it ended up forcing me to make the connection, and I would have appreciated a bit more breathing room in the narrative.
3.5/5 Stars.
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