Review by Booklist Review
In the opening pages of Han's lively second novel, following A Small Revolution (2017), the 105-year-old Korean narrator Jeonga, traveling in America and in the midst of a family crisis brought about by years of secrets, is suddenly killed by a bus. That doesn't stop her from telling her story, however. Ten days prior, Jeonga received a letter regarding a sick young American relative in need of money. Jeonga, her Birkin bag filled with family guilt, boards a plane with her housekeeper and her two sisters to mend past family wrongs. These include an illegitimate branch of the family about which only Jeonga knows and a fourth sister who decades ago followed love to North Korea and was disinherited. Han's narrator is sly, funny, and flawed. As she struggles with the truths about her family and feelings of abandonment and regret, Jeonga must attempt, from the afterlife, to save the various branches of this clan from unhappiness. Han delivers a satisfying tale with vivid relationships that will keep readers curious about this complex family shaped by war, loyalty, class-consciousness, and love.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Han (A Small Revolution) delivers an uneven ghost story involving a Korean matriarch's interventions before and after her death. During the Korean War, widow Jeonga Cha's 15-year-old son, Gwangmu, impregnates his teacher's 16-year-old sister, Hayun. Jeonga, worried the news would bring scandal to her family, arranges for Hayun and the baby to settle in the U.S. She continues raising Gwangmu in Seoul until he leaves for school in Chicago, then reconnects with Hayun. In the present, when Jeonga is 105, she discovers Gwangmu and Hayun's granddaughter Ellery is about to marry Jordan, a great-grandson of Jeonga's long-estranged older sister Seona. (Neither Ellery nor Jordan knows they're related, and Jeonga doesn't know whether Seona is still alive.) Jeonga hastens from Seoul to the U.S., to visit Hayun and Ellery in San Francisco and Jordan in Ohio, hoping to stop the wedding. Then, while in Chicago to visit another relative, she is struck by a bus and killed. Awaking in the afterlife, Jeonga is desperate for a "second chance," and attempts to reconcile with various family members. The novel sags from a few too many side plots, but the feisty and misanthropic Jeonga is a captivating narrator ("I hated people. They had always been terrible"; "You think old ladies can't run? We certainly can"). Though bloated, this tragicomedy has its charms. Agent: Cynthia Manson, Cynthia Manson Literary Agency. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A 105-year-old Korean woman embarks on a journey to America to prevent a wedding. Hak Jeonga dies at the age of 105, killed by a bus in Chicago. Narrating from the afterlife, she fills in the events leading up to the accident. Ten days prior, she'd received a letter from Joyce, the granddaughter of her estranged sister, Seona, who'd eloped to North Korea when she was young and never saw her family again. The letter, as it turns out, is a request for money: Joyce's son, Jordan, is terribly ill, and they need to raise $70,000 for an experimental treatment. What concerns Jeonga most in the letter, however, is the brief reference to Jordan's fiancee, Ellery Arnaud. Ellery is also the name of Jeonga's illegitimate great-granddaughter. After some sleuthing confirms that Ellery Arnaud is indeed her descendant, Jeonga proceeds to plan a trip to America, ostensibly to give the money to Joyce in person, but in reality, to try to forestall Jordan's marriage to Ellery. The narrator, in spite of her old age, speaks like a child. The sentences are short, simple, and prosaic, the sentiments immature. The novel relies too much on the uniqueness of the narrator's identity as an elderly Korean woman without doing the work to make her convincing. One wishes that the plot could be the novel's saving grace, but this is not the case. The stakes feel low, and as a result, the plot crawls, filled with geographical movement (from Seoul to San Francisco to Chicago to the afterlife) but lacking in emotional depth. The catharsis, when it comes, feels cheap, sagging with thinly rendered apologies. An unwieldy novel about family reconciliation. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
