March 2, 2020
In this enigmatic tale of two South Korean women dealing with tragedy, Shirley Jackson Award winner Pyun (The Hole) fails to sustain the energy from the dramatic opening developments in the lives of Se-oh Yun and Ki-jeong Shin. The anxious Se-oh, whose mother died when she was eight, doesn’t like to stay away for too long from the small, rundown house she shares with her father. One day, she returns from an errand to find the house devastated by a gas explosion, which the police suspect may have been the result of a suicide attempt by her father, who unbeknownst to her was in debt. She suspects, however, someone tried to kill her father. Meanwhile, high school teacher Ki-jeong learns that her college student sister has been found dead in the Namgang River. The drowning, which could have been either accident or suicide, elicits conflicting feelings, given how often Ki-jeong imagined her sibling, who tormented their mother, dead. Eventually, the story lines of the two leads intersect, but that happens late in the book and not in a very satisfying way. Despite sometimes moving portraits of characters in deep pain, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
April 1, 2020
Se-oh lives a reclusive existence with her father in her childhood home in South Korea, fearing that she'll be attacked because of a mysterious past transgression. While she is out on a rare errand, a gas explosion claims both her refuge and her father. After the detective investigating her father's death casually reveals that her father was meeting a debt collector the afternoon of the explosion, Se-oh's grief shifts into rage. Obsessed with assigning blame for her father's death, Se-oh stalks the debt collector, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Meanwhile, a high-school teacher, Ki-jeong, learns that her sister, Ha-jeong, a recent suicide, harbored secrets before she died. When everything she knew about Ha-jeong's life turns out to be lies, guilt propels Ki-jeong's desperate search for the truth. Slowly, Se-oh's and Ki-jeong's investigations come together as they uncover a cultish pyramid scheme with links to both of their pasts. Readers' groups and fans of literary suspense will find appeal in this dark meditation on the destructive power of self-deception.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)