Review by Booklist Review
Chung's (Sea Change, 2023) dedication--the recipient identified in Korean, 엄마, for "Mom," whom Chung calls her first storyteller--presciently launches her superb 15-story collection highlighting Korean and Korean American mothers and daughters navigating their lives both together and apart. Mythic Korean origins, deftly reimagined, memorably haunt some stories, including "Green Frog," in which the tale of the disobedient ranine who only listened to his mother in death parallels a New Jersey family in which the once-upon-a-time rebellious younger daughter returns to fulfill the filial duties of widowed-father-care and restaurant management. Channeling the legendary kumiho (nine-tailed fox), the protagonists turn vulpine in "Human Hearts," in which a surviving twin is exhorted to avenge her sister's murder by their grief-stricken mother. Standouts are many, effortlessly ranging from fantastical, futuristic, and slice-of-real-life narratives. A "thanatorobotics" five-year-old version of a dead teen is returned to her parents in "Attachment Processes." In "Presence," an exhausted woman seeks sanctuary at a spa after her and her now-ex-husband's business selling pick-and-choose personalized memory banks implodes. In "Arrow," a pregnant single woman, unsure of who the father might be, finally accepts, for a while, her estranged mother's nurturing. In "The Fruits of Sin," a community of older, competitive, judgmental, church-going women comes together for a pregnant teen. Chung proves she's a vibrant heir to her beloved first storyteller.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Chung's dynamic collection (after the novel Sea Change) employs various genres and styles to illuminate her Korean American characters' grief and regret. The evocative and playful opener, "How to Eat Your Own Heart," which will put readers in mind of Lorrie Moore, takes the form of a macabre set of instructions for recovering from heartbreak: "Plunge your heart into the boiling water the way you would for lobster." Some stories utilize elements of Korean folklore. For example, "Human Hearts" follows a young kumiho (a fox-like creature) who plots to avenge her sister's death at the hands of a shaman and lives with the knowledge that she was always second-best in her mother's eyes. Other entries verge into science fiction. In "Presence," Amy gets a divorce from her husband after his memory-uploading biotech company is investigated for malfeasance. Chung shines the most when portraying intense emotions with realism, such as in the beautifully strange closer, "The Love Song of the Mexican Free-tailed Bat," about a woman tenderly caring for her dead scientist father's bats in the way she wishes he'd cared for her. Chung's talents are on full display in these contemplative tales. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Familial obligations knit together these quiet, beautifully expressed stories about Korean Americans. What do we owe the people related to us through blood or marriage? What do we owe ourselves? These are the questions Chung addresses in her first collection of stories, following the novel Sea Change (2023). On the third anniversary of her mother's death from cancer, the narrator of "Green Frog," who dropped out of art school to care for her mother and help run the family restaurant, wonders whether it's time for a change: "I am here, I remind myself. And maybe it's time I did something about it." In "After the Party," a woman whose husband asks her to put up with one of his lecherous colleagues for the sake of his tenure case vows to protect her own professional dreams, even if her path forward isn't as clear as her husband's. Some of the most moving stories consider what women inherit from their mothers and grandmothers. The second-person narrator in the pleasingly zingy "The Arrow" gradually comes to appreciate her difficult mother when she finds herself single and pregnant, just as her mother once was: "Your mother, no matter how you feel about her, is a reminder that what you want--to have this baby and raise it on your own--is possible." In "You'll Never Know How Much I Loved You," a grandmother urges her young granddaughter to value herself and be her "own prize," and yet the rest of the piece is a devastating account of the difficulty of this task and the granddaughter's failure to use her beautiful singing voice. A handful of magical and fabulist stories aren't nearly as successful as the realistic work. Instead, Chung's gift is patiently unraveling ordinary moments in ordinary lives and conveying their significance in translucent prose. Lovely, emotionally resonant stories. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
