My Year Abroad

engaging prose & interesting characters; at the end, though, it felt like there were more characters than needed. in all honesty, i didn't care much for the supporting cast & the protagonist was grating at times, but the writing made up for all of it. the politics of capitalism & exploited labor was a bit messy, as was lee's commentary on asian culture, but the prose was so PHENOMENAL that it overshadows all of this. it's hard to give it anything less than 3.5, if only because it managed to grip me for ~450 pages.