Festival for Three Thousand Women

March 4, 1991
Spared by his obesity from the Vietnam draft, callow Bobby Comstock becomes a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea, and comes of age as he unwittingly plunges into the politics of the rural region where he teaches English at a boys' school. In Wiley's accomplished second novel (after Soldiers in Hiding ), Bobby at times seems the archetypal ``ugly American'': he gets drunk and steals a dead woman's photograph from a Confucian funeral; he glibly lies to his students. But as Bobby begins to shed his extra pounds he is also propelled by various events toward maturity. He rescues a nearly enslaved Korean tearoom girl and has an affair with a beautiful black woman who leaves the Corps following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Bobby learns the meaning of political freedom when he plays a key role in the town's ``spy-catching day,'' a government-orchestrated propaganda event designed to root out dissent. Passages from a diary kept by the school's vice-headmaster, counterpointed with the main narrative, provide a bemused Korean's perspective on well-meaning ``outside persons'' (foreigners). More than a sensitive depiction of a rite de passage, the narrative gains bite from numerous amusing, perceptive scenes highlighting the differences between the two cultures, each exotic in the other's eyes.

January 1, 1991
This is a coming-of-age novel set in the turbulent 1960s. Peace Corps volunteer Bobby Comstock is stationed in rural Korea to teach English at a middle school. Comstock's adjustment to Korean life, his loneliness, and his coming to terms with his own haphazard personality are presented with a faint overlay of philosophy in an attempt to broaden and deepen the context. While interest in Comstock and a few finely drawn minor characters carries the reader to the conclusion, Wiley promises more than he delivers, holding out hope that Bobby will reach a kind of enlightenment--and perhaps he does, but not with enough punch to satisfy this reader. By the author of Fools' Gold ( LJ 9/15/88) and winner of the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award for Soldiers in Hiding .-- Linda L. Rome, Mentor, Ohio

Copyright 1991 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.