Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - Folklorn

A peculiar book weaving together folklore, physics, psychology, and more. Major themes of trauma, immigration (side story on international adoption), racial and gender identity and oppression, mental illness, faith, and work in the sciences woven into a tale of mothers and daughters. I felt the many different threads could have been better woven together and the 3rd quarter of the book dragged on unnecessarily, in part due to the sometimes overly self conscious writing. All in all an interesting but not mind blowing read 4 stars

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voidboi's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Diving deep into Korean folklore, particle physics, intercultural adoption and immigration, and the merging of reality, mental illness, and the supernatural, Folklorn follows Elsa Park as she confronts her family's history, her identity, and most importantly, her complex relationship with her mother. The story manages to feel deeply true, connecting to the experience of questioning your world and yearning to understand your place in it, while still making the reader question what is real.

Elsa begins in Antarctica, where a childhood imaginary friend/hallucination/

spirit of her mysterious lost sister

begins to visit her again, and Elsa hears news that brings her mother back into her life and her mind. Elsa is smart, abrasive, and somewhat neurotic, and the characters closest to her (her brother, father, and Oskar in particular) push each other into difficult and satisfying places, resulting in a rich emotional and relational environment which Elsa tries her best to support and escape in equal measure. The plot progresses mostly slowly, but erratically, as Elsa moves in the grey areas between logic, conjecture, and paranoia.

I loved this book. It aches with love, and fear, and anger. It longs for meaning in the unknowable, and rages against the fates prescribed to us by our cultures, families, and biologies. While there are mostly dissimilarities between my relationship with my mom and Elsa's with hers, I found that it captured the feeling of

posthumously

grappling with the entirety of your mother's humanness, everything she wants you to be, and everything that can't be between you. In the end, this story won't be for everyone, but it is raw and beautiful and weird, and I'm glad I read it.

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hamohero's review against another edition

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Not my cup of tea. Don't really care for the characters or romance. Narrator would go on tangents and there were dialogues that made me go "Who talks like this?"

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delightfullybookish's review

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

I didn't realize until I finished this book that I had been holding my breath.

Our story begins with Elsa Park at the bottom of the world where she encounters her long-forgotten imaginary friend. This lonely, spectral creature brings with her the daunting task of untangling the generational trauma, immigrant hardships, personal demons, sacrifice, and mental illness plaguing a family.

Parts ghost story and family saga, cautionary tale and reimagined mythos; this story is cerebral and haunting (literal and figurative) blurring the real and the fantastical.

At times uneven, this book felt like an excavation.

I was surprised by how deeply I related to Elsa and her story. On the surface, why would I? My family is not Korean. I am not an academic. I've never set foot in Elsa's world… But I am also an immigrant to this country. Not born here, but young enough that my assimilation is so entrenched I have little connection to the country of my birth beyond folktales told to me by my own mother. Maybe they haunt me, like Elsa's haunt her.

Folklorn reflects and refracts themes of trauma, race, family, and grief. It asks how we relate to our family, our histories, our cultures, the stories we tell others, and the ones we tell ourselves.

After closing this book, I released the breath I had been holding and I allowed myself to feel hopeful. Folktales can be rewritten, cycles can be broken, and pain can be healed.

I hope you pick up this book. As they say "come for the ghosts, stay for the heartbreak" (I don't think anyone says but they should)

Folklorn will be published on April 27th, 2021.

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Thank you to Netgalley, Erewhon Books, and the author for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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