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A review by erat
Tongue by Chi-Young Kim, Kyung-ran Jo
3.0
Full disclosure: I received an advance reader copy of this book through Goodreads.
Tongue marks the first time Korean author Kyung-Ran Jo has been published in the English language (translated, to be more precise). The book tells the story of a cook who is grappling with life-after-boyfriend. Food is featured prominently in her process; I found the parallels between cooking and love/life/happiness/misery fascinating, and I confess to a bit of embarrassing drooling as I worked through the first 50 or so pages. In the end, the food parallels are taken to their outer-most extreme, ending with a plot twist that some folks here believe was obvious but I confess I did not see coming. The ending would make Shirley Jackson proud, and I'm sure it will make more than a few people squirm uncomfortably.
The jacket blurbs compare Kying-Ran Jo to Haruki Murakami. Although I did see some light similarities in a few spots, I find Murakami's writing to be more surreal and challenging, and thus more enjoyable overall. Tongue is as light as it is short (my copy is 212 pages long). I can not imagine anyone truly struggling to understand what is implied and what should be inferred. Having said that, this book is still well worth the read.
Tongue marks the first time Korean author Kyung-Ran Jo has been published in the English language (translated, to be more precise). The book tells the story of a cook who is grappling with life-after-boyfriend. Food is featured prominently in her process; I found the parallels between cooking and love/life/happiness/misery fascinating, and I confess to a bit of embarrassing drooling as I worked through the first 50 or so pages. In the end, the food parallels are taken to their outer-most extreme, ending with a plot twist that some folks here believe was obvious but I confess I did not see coming. The ending would make Shirley Jackson proud, and I'm sure it will make more than a few people squirm uncomfortably.
The jacket blurbs compare Kying-Ran Jo to Haruki Murakami. Although I did see some light similarities in a few spots, I find Murakami's writing to be more surreal and challenging, and thus more enjoyable overall. Tongue is as light as it is short (my copy is 212 pages long). I can not imagine anyone truly struggling to understand what is implied and what should be inferred. Having said that, this book is still well worth the read.