24 Feb / Violets by Kyung-sook Shin, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Mention of Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club sets this novel in 1999, when Oh San turns 23 that summer. She left her childhood village years ago, haunted by the memory of a best friendship’s wrenching cleaving. After being repeatedly abandoned by her mother, who was discarded by San’s father, San is surviving – not particularly living – in Seoul. Her name is a homonym for five (oh) three (san), as if she’s as anonymous as a random number in a city of millions.
After working as a salon assistant, San finds a job at a flower shop and begins to build a small community with the mute, older owner and his warmly energetic niece, Su-ae, who becomes San’s roommate. Su-ae drags San out for dawn swims and restaurant meals and shares mint-chocolate-chip ice cream for breakfast. And San suddenly, obsessively, falls in love. “Violet. Violence. Violator” – words San finds together in the dictionary, become a mantra and a warning of what’s to come.
Anton Hur, who made his translated-novel debut with Shin’s The Court Dancer (2018) and became an award-winning Korean-to-English powerhouse, returns to adroitly cipher her latest impressive import. With this trigger-warning-worthy tale, Man Asian Literary Prize-winning Shin delivers another meticulous, haunting characterization of an isolated young woman in crisis.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, February 15, 2022
Readers: Adult
Published: 2001 (Korea), 2022 (United States)