Review by Booklist Review
Covering most of the twentieth century across the Korean peninsula, Kim's debut novel wondrously reveals broken families and surprising alliances created by uncontrollable circumstances. Kim links multiple narrative prongs, effortlessly navigating overlaps and disconnects. Korea remains under Japan's ruthless occupation in 1917, which lasts until WWII's end in 1945. Many interactions between the colonizer and the controlled are horrific, but a fateful snowy night forces a Japanese officer and a starving hunter to form a bond. That mutual salvation will, decades later, both rescue then condemn the hunter's son. Meanwhile, ten-year-old Jade is initially offered as a servant then sold as an apprentice to renowned courtesan Silver. Jade grows up with Silver's two daughters, Luna and Lotus, until Luna is mercilessly raped by a Japanese major and the trio is sent to Seoul to be nurtured and trained by Silver's cousin Dani. Jade and Lotus blossom as accomplished, independent women, for a while thoroughly in charge of their hearts, bodies, and talents. Jade's friendship with JungHo, a street orphan when they meet as children, will bolster them both for lifetimes. Through colonization, liberation, war, and political chaos, some will manage to survive. Beyond her literary prowess, Korean-born, Princeton-educated polyglot Kim further showcases her other passions as artist and sustainability activist, interweaving the history of Korea's decimated tiger population as well as traditional singing, dancing, and even filmmaking.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Lots of anticipatory buzz is stoking avid interest in Kim's richly alluring and significant first novel.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kim's dreamy, intense debut is both a sure-footed historical account of the Korean struggle for independence from Japan and the emotionally fraught story of several people whose lives are inextricably tied together. Among the sprawling cast first introduced in 1917 is a starving Korean soldier who meets a Japanese soldier while hunting a tiger, a young woman raped and impregnated by a loutish Japanese officer, and a Seoul street urchin who joins the Communist Party. Several years later, a rickshaw driver makes his way up the economic ladder, and many others factor in over the following decades. At the center of the novel is Jade, the eldest daughter of a poor rural family, who in 1918 is trained as a courtesan and later becomes a famous actor--though that's not the end of her bumpy journey. As the lives of the characters touch, in small ways or large, romances bloom and fade, and fortunes rise and fall. While the members of the Japanese military often verge on being caricatures of villains, and some readers may balk at the novel's coincidences, the prose is ravishing and Kim demonstrates remarkable control of a complicated narrative. Even those with little knowledge of Korean history will come away struck by the way individuals shape and are shaped by the political and cultural changes of the first half of the 20th century. The author's off to a strong start. Agent: Jody Kahn, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (Dec.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Kim's debut sweeps through 20th-century Korean history, from a starving hunter rescuing a young Japanese officer from a tiger attack in 1917 to the sale of little Jade to Miss Silver's courtesan school by her downtrodden family to Jade's befriending an orphan boy named JungHo. When the fight for Korean independence arrives, JungHo joins in, and Jade--now an admired performer with a nobleman as a romantic possibility--must make hard choices. Billed as good reading for fans of Min Jin Lee, Lisa See, and Isabel Allende, which recommends it for a crossover audience of literary and pop fiction readers; with a 100,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An epic novel brings complex 20th-century Korean history to life. In this extraordinary historical novel, debut author Kim weaves together the story of friends and rivals trying to survive and thrive from the era of the Japanese occupation of Korea to the political purges of the mid-20th century. The book begins with a Korean hunter encountering a tiger in the snow when he is captured by a lost squad of Japanese soldiers. With its near-mythic evocations of several kinds of beasts, the prologue establishes the themes of the book. The majority of the novel follows Jade, whose impoverished farming family sends her as a young girl to work as a servant for a courtesan. Jade observes the rivalries of other girls in training, particularly Luna, the spoiled favored daughter of the head of the household, and Lotus, the spirited but plainer younger sister. Thanks to her intelligence and resourcefulness, Jade will grow up to become a celebrated courtesan and movie star in Seoul, where she and the two sisters end up as adults. Together they encounter various men, including the revolution-minded MyungBo, an intellectual fighting for Korean independence; the ever loyal JungHo, the leader of a street gang of orphaned boys; the slick and wealthy patron SungSoo; and the ambitious rickshaw driver HanChol. Jade, Luna, and Lotus fall in love with men from very different backgrounds, but their love and loyalty are not always returned. Kim shows clearly how patriarchy harms these resourceful women in one of the novel's major themes. Late in the book a Japanese general will remark, "How such enormous beasts have flourished in this little land is incomprehensible." He is referring to tigers, but he might as well be talking about the humans who fight here, too. Gorgeous prose and unforgettable characters combine to make a literary masterpiece. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
