A rare glimpse into an insular world.
A renowned North Korean novelist writes about marriage, family, and responsibility.
Now a best-selling author, Paek (b. 1949) began his working life in a steel factory. Reading and writing in his spare time, he enrolled in college, taking mostly long-distance courses, and, in 1976, graduated with a degree in Korean literature. To contribute to the Three Revolutions campaign that urged citizens to enhance their understanding of political ideology, technical skills, and culture, Paek chose a career in writing, soon attaining national popularity. Published in 1988, this novel, deftly translated and with an informative afterword by Kim (Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction, 2018), is set during a period of social and cultural transition, “the Hidden Hero campaign of the 1980s, which sought to recognize the extraordinary achievements of otherwise ordinary citizens” as well as continuing to promote self-improvement through education. To highlight the tensions involved in changing times, Paek focuses on a divorce: a couple seeking to dissolve their marriage and a judge who must decide on their case after a thorough investigation. The judge’s examination of the wife, Sun Hee, a popular and esteemed singer, and the husband, Seok Chun, a lathe worker in a factory, reveals intricate relationships between individuals and the collective. Sun Hee and Seok Chun are driven apart by conflicting perceptions of their roles in society: Sun Hee developed her talents and was rewarded; but Seok Chun, despite his wife’s goading, refused “to fulfill his true national duty—the duty to progress and advance in his social position.” Merely being a devoted worker is no longer enough: “Life’s true meaning is swimming upstream.” In a society that “is actively progressing toward becoming intellectualized in scientific technology and the arts,” marriage and family are at risk by individuals who refuse to move forward. Paek weaves themes of greed, corruption, and self-sacrifice into a subtle, restrained narrative that becomes nothing less than a paean to the family: society’s most valued unit, “where the love of humanity dwells.”
A rare glimpse into an insular world.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-231-19560-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.
An ambitious scientific experiment wreaks horrendous toll in the Booker-winning British author’s disturbingly eloquent sixth novel (after When We Were Orphans, 2000).
Ishiguro’s narrator, identified only as Kath(y) H., speaks to us as a 31-year-old social worker of sorts, who’s completing her tenure as a “carer,” prior to becoming herself one of the “donors” whom she visits at various “recovery centers.” The setting is “England, late 1990s”—more than two decades after Kath was raised at a rural private school (Hailsham) whose students, all children of unspecified parentage, were sheltered, encouraged to develop their intellectual and especially artistic capabilities, and groomed to become donors. Visions of Brave New World and 1984 arise as Kath recalls in gradually and increasingly harrowing detail her friendships with fellow students Ruth and Tommy (the latter a sweet, though distractible boy prone to irrational temper tantrums), their “graduation” from Hailsham and years of comparative independence at a remote halfway house (the Cottages), the painful outcome of Ruth’s breakup with Tommy (whom Kath also loves), and the discovery the adult Kath and Tommy make when (while seeking a “deferral” from carer or donor status) they seek out Hailsham’s chastened “guardians” and receive confirmation of the limits long since placed on them. With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives—without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have “tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.” That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power.
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.Pub Date: April 11, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4339-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The mother of all presidential cover-ups is the centerpiece gimmick in this far-fetched thriller from first-novelist Baldacci, a Washington-based attorney. In the dead of night, while burgling an exurban Virginia mansion, career criminal Luther Whitney is forced to conceal himself in a walk-in closet when Christine Sullivan, the lady of the house, arrives in the bedroom he's ransacking with none other than Alan Richmond, President of the US. Through the one-way mirror, Luther watches the drunken couple engage in a bout of rough sex that gets out of hand, ending only when two Secret Service men respond to the Chief Executive's cries of distress and gun down the letter-opener-wielding Christy. Gloria Russell, Richmond's vaultingly ambitious chief of staff, orders the scene rigged to look like a break-in and departs with the still befuddled President, leaving Christy's corpse to be discovered at another time. Luther makes tracks as well, though not before being spotted on the run by agents from the bodyguard detail. Aware that he's shortened his life expectancy, Luther retains trusted friend Jack Graham, a former public defender, but doesn't tell him the whole story. When Luther's slain before he can be arraigned for Christy's murder, Jack concludes he's the designated fall guy in a major scandal. Meanwhile, little Gloria (together with two Secret Service shooters) hopes to erase all tracks that might lead to the White House. But the late Luther seems to have outsmarted her in advance with recurrent demands for hush money. The body count rises as Gloria's attack dogs and Jack search for the evidence cunning Luther's left to incriminate not only a venal Alan Richmond but his homicidal deputies. The not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper climax provides an unsurprising answer to the question of whether a US president can get away with murder. For all its arresting premise, an overblown and tedious tale of capital sins. (Film rights to Castle Rock; Book-of-the-Month selection)
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-446-51996-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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