In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar," a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret," the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother.
In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson—writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience—Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.
In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar," a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret," the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother.
In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson—writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience—Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.
Critiques-
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Narrators Jackie Chung, Janet Song, and Greta Jung work together to present these short stories, which offer glimpses into the lives of contemporary Korean women. From the tragic ferry sinking that listeners might remember from the news a while back to quieter personal conflicts, the narrators create a rich vocal range for the mostly female characters. Chung, Song, and Jung sound sensitive, thoughtful, and kind, while wrestling with big questions of love, and loss. Listeners will be drawn into these intimate portrayals of young women who are dealing with the major events of life. The three provide enough variety to keep each story fresh and interesting. Fans of international literature will find much to admire in this audiobook. M.R. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
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April 26, 2021
Eunyoung’s engaging debut collection examines her protagonists’ interior lives in moments of longing, connection, and familial rift. In the title story, 10th-grader Shoko stays with Soyu during a week-long exchange program between South Korea and Japan, hoping to lay the groundwork for her dream of one day leaving Japan. Soyu notes how her grandfather’s talking with Shoko in Japanese makes him and her mother come alive (“I used to think they were like grandfather clocks that had stopped ticking, that gathered dust and faded in color each year”). In “Hanji and Youngju,” 27-year-old Youngju lives in a monastery for seven months and thinks about life passing her by, feeling guilty over abandoning grad school to be there. She is drawn to Hanji, a new volunteer at the monastery who is a veterinarian from Nairobi. She’s surprised how easy it is to speak with him as they share moments from their lives they’ve never told anyone before. In “Michaela,” the title character receives an ill-fated visit from her hairdresser mother in Seoul and recounts a trip they took there three decades earlier to hear the pope give a mass. Eunyoung’s lyrical prose and complex characters will captivate readers. Agent: Barbara Zitwer, Barbara J. Zitwer Agency.
