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Forgotten Country (2012)

by Catherine Chung(Favorite Author)

3.46 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1594488088 (ISBN13: 9781594488085)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Riverhead Hardcover

review 1: Wanted to like this one. Its not just that the blurb on it is misleading which blurbs sometimes tend to do, but the novel itself meanders after a while. The author sketches Janie well but Hannah? Not so much. The sisters meet, leave, come and go without much purpose, without any real intentions and after a while everyone is simply flailing as does the plot. That said, it had some of the most beautiful descriptions of the Korean countryside!
review 2: Ms. Chung has a unique writing style that is soft and sweet. It is also markedly different from her non-fiction style which I've read in the NY Times. It's not at all to my taste but it is consistent. That said, the book itself felt like a disconnected and subpar effort. There's an interesting vignette about Janie'... mores childhood, an emotional explosion near the end, and walks with her father, a backstory about the family in Korea, a missing sister who deserts the family, but that's not anything out of the ordinary. I suppose this disjointedness is part of the "point" and is supposed to be postmodern/multicultural, but I didn't really feel it. It wasn't anywhere near the level of Chang Rae-Lee's Native Speaker or even Suki Kim's The Interpreter. It might be a question of taste to an extent, but I've read much better fiction in a writing workshop with writers who have never been published and probably never will be, and definitely in self-published books. It might even be that an agent told her to put a certain dose of this and that in it to sell. Don't know. This book was shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway award and other honors, but then again we live in a time when our President wins a Nobel Peace Prize for winning an election, itself and by nature a process wrought with fraud. In any case, I can't say I "liked" it so I can't give it three stars, as it wouldn't be honest. I might read her second effort assuming it could get published and if the subject matter seems more interesting. less

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