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MISS KIM KNOWS

AND OTHER STORIES

This subtle collection is elegant, honest, and empowering.

Eight stories of ordinary women living complex lives can also be seen as eight stories of complex women living ordinary lives.

In these stories, set largely in Seoul, Korean women ranging in age from 10 to 80 navigate the everyday with a quiet determination to allow themselves joy. Often, the stories give the reader insight into family dynamics in the context of the larger society’s repression. In the collection’s tender opening story, “Under the Plum Tree,” the narrator’s oldest sister, Geumju, is set adrift from a life controlled by the labor of duty by Alzheimer’s disease, finally affording her time to enjoy simple pleasures. In “Runaway,” the narrator’s elderly father runs away from home in order to “start living [his] life” in the years he has left. Though his children and their mother are at first distraught, the father’s absence allows them the space to reveal themselves to each other as fully rounded humans, rather than automatons fulfilling their familial roles. Other stories take on the foundational misogyny of a patriarchal culture more directly: In “Grown-up Girl,” a woman who self-identities as a feminist finds herself conflicted by the way her high school aged daughter stands against unwanted sexual attention. In the sublime “Night of Aurora,” an aging woman struggles with her aversion to being asked to help raise her grandson as society expects, while her daughter struggles with her own aversion to quitting work to dedicate herself solely to motherhood. Throughout the collection floats the specter of Miss Kim—a model for the possibilities of Korean womanhood who is sometimes an icon for the rights of women to live self-determined lives, sometimes a literal incarnation of the invisibility of women’s labor, and sometimes a foil for the narrator’s own complicated feelings about gender roles, duty, aging, and the relationships between mothers and daughters. Spare but never stark, weary but never despairing, Cho’s trim prose examines the under-seen world of women with a keen appreciation for all the possibilities for their lives—including the ones they themselves may not be able to imagine.

 This subtle collection is elegant, honest, and empowering.

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024

ISBN: 9781324095316

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Liveright/Norton

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

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INTO THE UNCUT GRASS

A sweet bedtime story.

A boy and his stuffed bear head into the woods.

Having captured readers’ attention with Born a Crime (2016), his bestselling memoir of growing up in South Africa, comedian and television host Noah has written a parable about decision-making. As he puts it in a brief prologue, “It’s about disagreements and difference—but it’s also about how we bridge those gaps and find what matters most, whether we’re parents or kids, neighbors, gnomes, or political adversaries. It’s a picture book, but it’s not a children’s book. Rather, it is a book for kids to share with parents and for parents to share with kids.” With plentiful illustrations by Hahn and in language aimed at young listeners, it tells the story of a small boy so impatient to start his Saturday adventures that he rebels against the rules of his household and heads out without brushing his teeth or making his bed, despite the reminders of his stuffed bear, Walter. “We can’t just run away,” protests the bear. “Your mother will miss you. And where will we sleep? And who will make us waffles?” “We’ll build our own house,” the boy responds. “And we’ll grow our own waffles!” From there, the pair go on their walkabout, encountering a garden gnome, a pair of snails, and a gang of animated coins who have lessons to offer about making choices. Though the author suggests in the introduction that adult readers might enjoy the book on their own, those looking for a follow-up to the memoir or a foray into adult fiction should be warned that this is not that book.

A sweet bedtime story.

Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024

ISBN: 9780593729960

Page Count: 128

Publisher: One World/Random House

Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024

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