Available:*
Material Type | Library | Call Number | Item Barcode | Location |
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Book | Searching... Andover - Memorial Hall Library | FICTION DUSAPIN | 31330009031562 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Billerica Public Library | FICTION/DUSAPIN | 33934004402930 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Chelmsford Public Library | FIC/DUSAPIN | 31480011482004 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Groveland - Langley-Adams Library | FIC DUSAPIN | 32121000900510 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Hamilton-Wenham Public Library | FIC DUSAPIN | 30470001907939 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Haverhill Public Library | FIC/DUSAPIN E | 31479007064115 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Lowell - Pollard Memorial Library | FIC DUSAPIN | 31481005573469 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library | PB/FIC | 32124001971944 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Middleton - Flint Public Library | F DUSAPIN | 32126001795157 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Newburyport Public Library | FIC DUSAPIN E | 32128003909307 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... North Andover - Stevens Memorial Library | F DUSAPIN | 31478010195379 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Topsfield Town Library | FIC DUSAPIN | 32133002633544 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Westford - J.V. Fletcher Library | F DUSAPIN | 31990005104760 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman --a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author
It's winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North's watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.
The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an "authentic" Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows--the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she's pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.
An exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Dusapin's voice is distinctive and unmistakable.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Dusapin's luminous debut follows a young French Korean woman as she wrestles with desire, daughterhood, and identity. The narrator, 24, works as a receptionist at a guesthouse on the border of North and South Korea. Her boyfriend, Jun-Oh, a model who is away in Seoul, and her mother have pressured her to get plastic surgery to conform to the country's beauty standard, but she refuses. During the wintry off-season, French comic book writer Yan Kerrand checks in. She is captivated and unnerved by Kerrand's presence, and soon a flirtation develops. Kerrand is in search of inspiration for the final issue of his series, and the narrator agrees to teach him about the landscape and history of the area. As she contends with her mother's sharp and constant criticism, along with anxiety over the volatile state of life along the border ("We're on a knife-edge.... In a winter that never ends"), she falls in love with Kerrand, then worries he'll be driven away after Jun-Oh returns. Dusapin's precise sentences, expertly translated by Higgins, elicit cinematic images and strong emotions. This poignant, fully realized debut shouldn't be missed. Agent: Pierre Astier, Astier-Pécher Literary & Film Agency. (Apr.)
Kirkus Review
An atmospheric novel about an independent young woman in a South Korean beach town. Dusapin's debut novel depicts a young biracial Korean woman living and working in a small guesthouse in Sokcho, South Korea, a beach town 60 km from the North Korean border. When a mysterious middle-aged Frenchman named Yan Kerrand arrives, off-season, in the midst of the winter slump, the woman is intrigued. She has never met her father, a Frenchman who left her mother after a brief affair, but has studied French language and literature in school and dreams of traveling to the country someday. The novel unfolds in brief vignettelike chapters that reveal the unnamed woman's daily life. After work, she visits her mother, who works in the fish market and is renowned for her delicious octopus soondae. Despite pressure to marry, the young woman is ambivalent about her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, Jun-oh, an aspiring model in Seoul. Dusapin's novel avoids clichés in the woman's developing relationship with the lonely foreigner, who turns out to be an internationally renowned graphic novelist looking for inspiration for a new book. The woman observes the man and never looks at him as a savior or stereotypical lover. Instead, Dusapin depicts a fiercely intelligent, independent woman who longs to be seen clearly for who she is and the choices she has made, including leaving Seoul to help her aging mother. Higgins' exquisite translation from the French original is a pleasure to read. The descriptions of daily life in the titular town are beautiful, elliptical, and fascinating, from the fish markets near the beach to soju-drenched dinners in local bistros to a surreal glimpse of a museum on the DMZ. Dusapin, who like her protagonist is of French and Korean heritage, has won several awards for her novel in Switzerland, where she lives, including the Prix Robert-Walser and the Prix Régine Desforges. A triumph. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.