Scan barcode
A review by arirang
Divorce by Kim Soom
4.0
What she didn’t say was that, since his accusation, she hadn’t been able to write.
Part of the Yeoyu (여유) series from Strangers Press, eight chapbooks, each featuring a translated short story of around 30 pages, showcasing the best writing from the current generation of Korean authors. For my review of the overall series see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2862365043
이혼 by 김숨 (Kim Soom) has been translated as Divorce by Emily Yae Won (이 예원)
Kim Soom is another of the featured authors that has only previously been translated as part of the very-difficult-to-find bilingual Asia Publishers collection.
Divorce is narrated by a poet as she waits with her husband in an office to register a mutually agreed divorce.
Unlike her mother, who she unsuccessfully persuaded to leave her father, her husband Choisik isn’t abusive, but rather neglects her for his, in his view, more socially important work as a photographer and social activist.
She comes to the realisation that they need to separate after she has undergone several years of treatment for cancer. Locked out after returning late from a work event, while still undergoing HRT to counteract the effects of the treatment, she can not contact Choisik and spends the night in a 24 hour fast-food restaurant:
Staring through the fast-food restaurant window at the empty pedestrian crossing, she recalled how Choisik hadn’t been at her side when she miscarried a year into their marriage, or when ... he hadn’t been there when ... . Not had he been there the day she’d had an appointment at the ObGyn to find out why she hadn’t been able to get pregnant after the miscarriage.
There were times when she wanted to ask him how someone so committed and connecting with the socially disadvantaged, to documenting their suffering in painstaking detail, could be so unfeeling to the suffering of the person closest to him.
But when she does confront him he appeals to her social conscience as a poet, telling her “if you abandon me, you’re as good as abandoning a person’s soul. So anything you write from now on is a lie.”, suggesting (to her contempt) that he will now be an "orphan".
She responds: “I’m not here to save your soul. That’s not why I married you,” but in reality she is, as the opening quote suggests, troubled.
An interesting and well-balanced account of a relationship and the competing pressures of societal, artistic and political spheres in different generations.
4 stars and I hope more of Kim Soom’s work is translated into English.
Part of the Yeoyu (여유) series from Strangers Press, eight chapbooks, each featuring a translated short story of around 30 pages, showcasing the best writing from the current generation of Korean authors. For my review of the overall series see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2862365043
이혼 by 김숨 (Kim Soom) has been translated as Divorce by Emily Yae Won (이 예원)
Kim Soom is another of the featured authors that has only previously been translated as part of the very-difficult-to-find bilingual Asia Publishers collection.
Divorce is narrated by a poet as she waits with her husband in an office to register a mutually agreed divorce.
Unlike her mother, who she unsuccessfully persuaded to leave her father, her husband Choisik isn’t abusive, but rather neglects her for his, in his view, more socially important work as a photographer and social activist.
She comes to the realisation that they need to separate after she has undergone several years of treatment for cancer. Locked out after returning late from a work event, while still undergoing HRT to counteract the effects of the treatment, she can not contact Choisik and spends the night in a 24 hour fast-food restaurant:
Staring through the fast-food restaurant window at the empty pedestrian crossing, she recalled how Choisik hadn’t been at her side when she miscarried a year into their marriage, or when ... he hadn’t been there when ... . Not had he been there the day she’d had an appointment at the ObGyn to find out why she hadn’t been able to get pregnant after the miscarriage.
There were times when she wanted to ask him how someone so committed and connecting with the socially disadvantaged, to documenting their suffering in painstaking detail, could be so unfeeling to the suffering of the person closest to him.
But when she does confront him he appeals to her social conscience as a poet, telling her “if you abandon me, you’re as good as abandoning a person’s soul. So anything you write from now on is a lie.”, suggesting (to her contempt) that he will now be an "orphan".
She responds: “I’m not here to save your soul. That’s not why I married you,” but in reality she is, as the opening quote suggests, troubled.
An interesting and well-balanced account of a relationship and the competing pressures of societal, artistic and political spheres in different generations.
4 stars and I hope more of Kim Soom’s work is translated into English.