SOURCE: "Excess Identities," in The New York Times Book Review, April 9, 1995, p. 24.

[In the following review of Native Speaker, Cooper criticizes Lee's poorly developed spy plot and uneven prose style, but praises his depiction of Korean immigrant family life.]

Henry Park, the narrator of Chang-rae Lee's first novel, Native Speaker, is the son of Korean immigrants, a boy known as Marble Mouth in kindergarten, when his tongue felt "booby-trapped and dying" as it wrapped itself around the agonies of English. Grown up now, Henry has taken the classic path of American assimilation while using his adopted language to clear the way to college and a career.

A curious career—for Henry is a spy. He works for Glimmer & Company, a New York dirty-tricks firm that specializes in what he wryly calls "ethnic coverage," hiring first-generation Americans to keep watch on the immigrant communities they still have a foot...