Review by Booklist Review
After two notable novels, Kim presents an exquisite collection of 10 stories. In a not-too-distant future, humans have managed to grievously injure, scar, and contaminate planet Earth. Kim's memorable characters somehow survive, loving and breaking, abandoning and reclaiming each other. Disconnects particularly haunt, as in "Biodome," in which two awkward strangers consider an arranged marriage under New Seoul's translucent enclosure offering protection from the toxic atmosphere. "Mountain, Island" features the devolving friendship between two boys eking out an existence atop a rotting landfill. "Bioark" follows the complicated relationships between the passengers on the self-sustaining (for now) eponymous ship bypassing the wasteland. The extraordinary "Older Sister" covers the evolving decades of two estranged Korean American sisters and their conflagratory reunion. Human-animal bonds are highlighted in the heart-wringing "KwaZulu-Natal," about a boy and the elephant he can't save, while the somewhat hopeful title story features a Korean-adoptee scientist who nurtures a struggling polar bear cub on one of world's last ice caps and experiences personal peace. Kim concludes by gravely sharing her environmental concerns, "If you're an artist, it is not conscionable to use our ecological catastrophe as material for fiction and not personally do something to help." Kim reveals exactly how she lives her truth and states, "We have within ourselves everything we need to save humanity."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this delicate story collection from Kim (City of Night Birds), characters struggle to hold on to their sense of identity amid momentous changes. The protagonist of "Biodome," set in a future world racked by climate collapse, is responsible for monitoring the presence of toxic dust in his domed city. He feels unmoored in his life, like he's "being pushed by the crowd on a packed subway platform." In "Mountain, Island," the hopes of a child living on an island made of garbage are pinned on the slim chance of a popular boy band noticing his dance videos. The title story follows a marine biologist attempting to help an abandoned polar bear cub while grappling with the lingering trauma of her adoption from Korea by a white family in Idaho. The excellent "Older Sister" explores a young Korean American woman's devotion to her family, as she commits herself to her studies in hopes of earning enough money to take care of her parents after their store was destroyed in the Los Angeles riots. Throughout, Kim excels at revealing the far-reaching and destabilizing effects of traumatic events on her characters. Readers will savor these nuanced tales. Agent: Jody Kahn, Brandt & Hochman. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Kim's (City of Night Birds) short story collection shows how humankind has damaged the environment. Some of the stories project forward: one looks into a future with no animals and no habitable land, where surviving humans float endlessly through the seas. In another, Seoul is contained within a biodome, safe from toxic sand that previously plagued it. Other stories are set in the present, or a reimagined present. Under unusual circumstances, a motherless boy in South Africa becomes best friends with an elephant, and estranged sisters find their way to a kind of resolution in the face of a wildfire. Kim stresses the importance of human relationships and creates characters who, in their varied ways, come to realize that love might be the only thing powerful enough to tether them to dry land, whether in a warming New York City, in an arid South African desert, or on the deck of an ark. VERDICT Well-drawn and compelling stories that span continents, encouraging the essential acts of saying or doing something to protect what we hold dear.--Jessica Epstein
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Stories explore love amid climate disasters. Novelist Kim combines themes of climate catastrophe and love in her first collection of short fiction. Some of the 10 stories have a futuristic bent, like "Biodome" and "Bioark," in which characters search for love while living, respectively, in a protective dome in a future Seoul or on a nouveau ark sailing the blood-red ocean. The plots are clever riffs on class and capitalism, revealing diverse reactions to the environmental disaster, from hoarding resources and seeking clout to dreaming of escape. Other stories can be didactic, as in "Notting Hill," in which a character spells out the environmental stakes in casual conversation: "So, you do realize the world's best scientists have testified that Earth's average temperatures have risen to levels never before seen in the history of humanity…" On occasion, Kim resorts to stereotypes or caricatures to make her points about the global reach of climate disaster. In "KwaZulu-Natal," the mixed-race Zulu and Afrikaner protagonist speaks entirely in dialect: "When it's blimmin hot like this in August...I always think on my elephant." It's an awkward choice given that every other character in the book--whether Korean, Argentinian, Norwegian, American, or even British--speaks in standard American English. "Mountain, Island" is a tonally strained satire of poverty tourism featuring a child living on a remote island used as a dumping ground who attains fame by imitating K-pop dancers. "Older Sister" unironically recycles model minority tropes, namely a perfect 1600-SAT-scoring daughter of hard-working Korean immigrants whose store is attacked during the riots following the Rodney King verdict in Los Angeles. It's potentially rich material, but the characters are flat. Kim details her own environmental activism in an afterword: "If you're an artist, it is not conscionable to use our ecological catastrophe as material for fiction and not personally do something to help." While Kim's sincerity is never in doubt, the collection has a hasty feel to its construction. Uneven writing gets in the way of environmental plotlines. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
