Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur

10 reviews

biojesspj's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

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shannabanana6's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense slow-paced

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

3.5

It started slow and was pretty tough to get into but once they introduced Oskar to the story I really enjoyed it, he was probably my favorite character honestly. It was hard to like any of the characters in the main family. There was also a lot of childhood and generational trauma to get through which didn't make getting into the book easier at all but it was written from an honest perspective.

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cviii's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.5

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5aru's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

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hey_evelina's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

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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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kylieqrada's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.5

3.5 ⭐s. I AM NOT SMART ENOUGH FOR THIS BOOK. Let's just get that out of the way up front. I genuinely didn't understand large chunks of this novel, even after reading them multiple times. However, something about it made me keep reading, and I ended up really enjoying the whole experience. I *think* I understand how everything wrapped up, but TBH I don't really care either way. I just loved being immersed in this topsy-turvy world of Korean folklore, mental illness, family drama, and generational trauma. Also, the bird got hit by a car and I totally called 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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girlonbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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? Yes

5.0

🎀🎀🎀🎀🎀 (five stars as rated in red ribbons trailing along behind your friend each time she visits)

Stationed at a research center on Antarctica, Elsa Park is confident that she’s finally put as much distance as she can between her and the generational trauma of her Korean-American family. When a “ghost” from her past reappears unexpectedly, Elsa must come to terms with her history – both myth and fact – whether she’s ready to or not.

“Please,” she said from her corner, “do not blame us for how our lives have turned out. Perhaps it’s not just the women in our family anyhow—our entire people have been telling the wrong stories, making a wretched mess of our history. As if anybody wants to be told that their ability to endure is their greatest virtue. No wonder we get invasions and occupations, war and asshole husbands. What kind of stories, I wonder, do the white countries tell of themselves?”

Folklorn is an exploration of diaspora, identity and self love at it’s most revolutionary. The experiences – both real and imagined – of the protagonist, Elsa, as well as her brother, Chris, her parents and particularly that of her friend, Oskar are all written, even at their worst with so much compassion. And while the pain was visceral at moments, it does ultimately lead to a place of healing that is deeply deserved by the characters and was profoundly satisfying for me as the reader. For me, of course, the best part of this book was getting to share it with my friends (for whom similar stories and experiences of the Asian diaspora are starkly underrepresented in publishing) relate and empathize with Folklorn so deeply. There really is no “reviewing” an experience like that.

Oskar was easily my favorite character (though the more I look back on the book I find myself really empathizing with Chris as well). Described by my friend Moon as the “hottest Korean in fiction as of now,” I was enamored with the acceptance and empathy that Oskar held for Elsa even when she could not find the will to feel it for herself. From a mental health standpoint, I hold deep appreciation for Oskar’s because of his insistence on Elsa’s value and attractiveness to him even when she was clearly not healthy. Love is not something to be withdrawn when we are at our worst. And we are not only worthy of it once we’ve found the strength – more often resources – to “fix ourselves.” The Park family exemplifies how much of a privilege the idea of “mental health” can truly be as well as the weight of generational trauma. This aspect of Elsa and Oskar’s arc together, in particular, really affected me personally.

✨ Rep in this book: East Asian cast of characters

✨ Content warnings for this book: drowning, death of a parent, racism, domestic abuse, violence

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mvvelde's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

3.0

There are many things that I enjoyed about Folklorn. Overall the author's telling with the usage of folklore was beautiful and the writing was lovely. I also really enjoyed part of the plot taking place in a higher academic setting--the usage of language and the the parallel of Elsa's scientific studies with her own journey were intriguing. I also enjoyed her slapstick way of communicating, as well as the stream of conscious of her thoughts from cultural stereotypes to reasoning and flashbacks. I cannot highlight these points enough--they alone made the book worth reading.

That being said, there were also a number of things I didn't enjoy about the book. But before I go further, I would like, first, to note that I am likely not the intended reader for such a book. As such, please take my criticisms of Folklorn with a grain of salt. I felt it hard to connect with the story in general--something that I really don't understand because I really did enjoy the premise and all of the elements in Folklorn. Perhaps this is due to how drawn-out the opening 30% of the book felt. But some of actions taken and things said by Elsa felt counterintuitive to how the plot developed.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC.

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