"My Year Abroad" by Chang-Rae Lee

 

Two thirds of the way through Chang-Rae Lee’s thrill ride of a novel, “My Year Abroad,” protagonist Tiller Bardmon, midway through his college years, leads off a chapter this way: “Question: What happens to you when you’ve gone way too far? Not just off trail, not even bushwhacking, but venturing into a region where it turns out the usual physics don’t much apply. … To look back at myself during my stay at Drum Kappagoda’s lodge is to slough off every notion of whatever made me me.”

Lee spends almost 500 pages sloughing off every notion of what makes Tiller Tiller in “My Year Abroad.”

The basics, broadly: a wealthy Chinese-American entrepreneur takes Tiller under his wing and after a very short acquaintance flies him from his home in New Jersey to the Far East, pushing him into a key spokesperson’s role for a new health drink he’s hoping to bring to market. Everything they do, every time they consume anything, all is over-indulgence—food, drink, drugs (taken both voluntarily and involuntarily)—and any kind of physical recreation. Gobs and gobs of money are invested, traded, made, or speculated about. Our heroes nearly drown in the surf off Oahu, pay a surprise visit to a brothel, and wind up at a secluded lodge outside of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, in China. The owner of the lodge is hosting a competition for Yoga masters.

Tiller bears few illusions about himself: his mother fled the scene when he was barely in grade school, and while he’s friendly and intelligent enough, Tiller has a strong tendency to latch on—and not let go—to anyone who treats him well. The quote leading this review off appears before things really get weird for the young man.

So there’s nothing ordinary about the plot of “My Year Abroad.” We travel to some exotic locales, indulge in mind-boggling (at least for me) pastimes, run across some truly tough customers, and become imprisoned in a ruthless businessman’s workshop. All the while Tiller’s dad, Clark, thinks Tiller’s in Western Europe on the cheap, seeing the sights, dallying with young ladies, and pretending to study lit. The story is told in two threads: one contains the events I’ve described here, and the other occurs afterward, when Tiller has returned to the States, to an unidentified, unremarkable town.

Lee focuses us on the themes of race, slave exploitation (perpetrated by Asian businessmen), and shady modern business practices. Most of all, though, we have the painful growth of Tiller, with its chaotic, threatening nature. After he is drugged and … explored … by the oddly laconic daughter of a Far Eastern millionaire, he would look back on the experience, and utter the quote above, about sloughing off his old identity. Ultimately, one of the Yoga masters, a friendly if atypical practitioner, tells him to keep inviting the sublime that’s flowing around him.
 
Then she quotes the great Swami Sivananda: “‘This world is your body. This world is a great school. This world is your silent teacher.’”

Tiller says, “I loved hearing her say that, and as unsilently as she did. I loved, too, the idea of learning from the world, this world that was also only you. Was this the secret circularity? That belonged to you as much as it did to anyone? Yes and yes. The most pressing question, I suppose … was whether you belonged first to somebody else.”

This is a fine novel to experience. Everyone who loves a fun read will love “My Year Abroad.” The locations, the cultures, the action, the characters, the mystery, the tension in both narrative threads—all these prove Lee’s mastery and his vision.