A moving and meditative account of the crushing demands of Korean careerism.
In Jeong’s novel, a group of recent Korean college graduates navigate the unyielding competitiveness that permeates both professional and personal life.
Youngbaek Kim has much to be proud of—after he graduates from the prestigious Sky University, he lands a job at Corporation P, the second biggest company in Korea. However, he is plagued by discontent; he studied philosophy in college and feels stymied by the tediously banal routines of office life. Also, he constantly frets about money—it seems impossible that he will ever save enough to buy a home that others will be impressed by, and he fecklessly tries his hand at investment. His friends, Dongjoo Lee and Inyoung Choi, both seem much happier and much better positioned to win the endless rat race that dominates their lives. Dongjoo Lee is a programmer at the top corporation in Korea and handsomely compensated, while Inyoung Choi has a job in the civil service, a position coveted for its stability. However, they are both just as anxious about the future as Youngbaek, and as envious of him as he is of them. The author artfully depicts the Korean obsession with success and a society that strictly separates winners and losers through a process of “verification.” “Verification became a source of envy with everyone trying to take the successes of those around them and spin them as their own. It is high school all over again, with students using Photoshop to falsify their college entrance exam scores to receive verification from the community.” Youngbaek sees a chance at happiness when he becomes engaged to Jungyoon, a woman with whom he falls deeply in love—but her mother talks her out of it, convincing her that she and Youngbaek “just aren’t in the same league,” and that she can find someone with better financial prospects.
Jeong’s tale is impressively thoughtful—he reflects, with great clarity, on the ways in which Korea’s socioeconomic liberalization discarded one prohibitive hierarchy for another. As Youngbaek observes, “There are always more stairs to climb. Stairs upon stairs upon stairs...I guess Korea’s ancient class system of endless hierarchies, has really only changed in name. It will continue to loom over me and on to future generations. Still, climbing endless stairs is different from the impossibility of climbing up a family tree.” Friendships are almost necessarily converted into rivalries, and romantic connections are reduced to opportunities for social climbing, each date conducted in a metaphorical “interrogation room.” The author’s writing has a lapidary elegance to it—he subtly creates an atmosphere of melancholy and sad inevitability, as if there is no escape from the cultural pressures of Korean life. The plot moves at an unhurried pace, which can seem excessively languorous, and there is more than a touch of adolescent melodrama in Youngbaek’s tortured angst—a self-indulgent theatricality that borders on ponderousness. Still, Jeong’s depiction of Korean life, especially as experienced by its younger generation, is marvelously meticulous and rendered with great emotional power.
A moving and meditative account of the crushing demands of Korean careerism.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2023
ISBN: 979-1198200242
Page Count: 226
Publisher: METRIC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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