The Interpreter
Author: Suki Kim
Translator: Eun-seon Lee
Publisher: Hwanggumgaji
Hardcover | 480 pages | 195*135mm
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This book is written in Korean only. |
About This Book
Interpreter Suzy Park, the 29-year-old protagonist of this ambitious first
novel, carries a lot of baggage: two rocky relationships with married men,
estrangement from her sister, a series of unsatisfying jobs and the guilt of
having cut ties with her parents before both were shot dead in an unsolved
double murder. The question is not whether Park can survive the trauma, but
whether this hybridrelationship/mystery/suspense/ Korean immigrant story can.
The cross-pollination of forms creates depth, but it also creates weight. The
dark, doomed-to-fail relationships Park engages in can be viewed as a function
of her disconnection from life following the murder of her parents, but these
relationships also deaden the tone of an already very serious novel, and the
present tense narration has a dreamlike quality that compounds the problem.
Luckily, as the novel progresses, Kim's talents become apparent: a good eye for
detail, an excellent prose style and the ability to create compelling
characters. When Park stumbles across a clue about her parents' five-year-old
murder, the urgency of the mystery gradually overcomes the inertia of her
relationships, and the search for her now missing sister contributes additional
suspense. As Park's investigations lead closer to the truth, the novel's gloom
becomes a luminous darkness, and the latter half has an almost hypnotic effect,
marred only by a rushed ending. This is an intriguing, tortured portrait of a
second-generation Korean-American by a promising young writer.
About The Author
Suki Kim was born and raised in South Korea and came to New York at the age of
thirteen. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Review of Books and The
New York Times. She is a graduate of Barnard College and lives in Manhattan.
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