The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A dropout’s lesson in love, business
The perfect place to hide from your past may be suburban New Jersey. That’s what Tiller, the young narrator of Chang-rae Lee’s new book “My Year Abroad” thinks, anyway. In his sixth novel, Lee records the adventures of this college dropout in a wild tale that moves coolly between satire and thriller.
Twenty-year-old Tiller is supposed to be in college on an overseas program, but unbeknown to his dad, he has spent the last few months on a series of bizarre adventures in Asia.
Upon their conclusion, he shacks up with a new girlfriend, Val, and her son, who are in a witness protection program and share Tiller’s penchant for hiding in plain sight. Entrenched in her own secrets, Val does not pry into Tiller’s troubles as he attempts to process recent tumultuous events that have left him “smashed to raw bits.”
As Tiller reveals through flashbacks, it was a chance encounter with a fascinating character named Pong Lou that led to an extraordinary turn of events for him. Pong, a Chinese immigrant, is a Big Pharma chemist by day and a rollicking creative entrepreneur by night. He is simultaneously humble and ruthlessly enterprising.
Spotting a shining potential in Tiller, Pong whisks him off on international ventures as an assistant. Pong becomes a hero to
Tiller, who is running, perhaps, from the sad tatters of his family life, which has been defined by his mother’s inexplicable and abrupt abandonment of him and his father.
Thrust into bewildering situation after bewildering situation as Pong convenes with his various business partners in Asia, Tiller discovers he has preternatural talents that he never imagined, including a gift for karaoke which will serve him in unexpected ways. Lee paints Shenzhen, Macau and finally an unnamed valley in Guangdong as the pulsing backdrops for the kinds of very real fortunes being made in China today, and the wild ambitions and audacious brutality of a menacing cast that aspire to them.
As the narrative hurtles toward a shocking and cinematic climax, Tiller’s funny and naive observations keep the reader rooting for this wonderfully magnetic lost soul and his enigmatic mentor. Through Tiller’s sweet vulnerability and his steadfast grasp on hope, Lee tells a story of what it means to be plucked from darkness into the light of recognition, and in doing so, explores the fundamental human desires to be seen and to love.