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mattdube 's review for:
Your Republic Is Calling You
by Young-Ha Kim
I wanted to read this for what feels like forever, because I thought, well, some sort of mystery-espionage story about S Korea has to be interesting. And this doesn't disappoint, in spite of not being much of a thriller.
In fact, the plot is the awakening of a sleeper agent from the North who has been in Seoul for twenty years and built a life, as he tries to decide what to do. We also see his wife and fifteen year old daughter and a couple other characters go about their days, and in the process, I think we do get a legitimately panoramic view of contemporary (and even twenty years worth of) Korean culture. It's a smart and insightful book and if you weren't naturally curious about what life is like on the Korean peninsula in kind of an NPR way, I don't know that you'd like this much at all.
I am that kind of reader, and I enjoyed this enough to want to read other books by this author. He writes well-- there are some stylistic touches early on of a kind of stripped down prose that evokes a less downwind Marlowe, though the book regresses to a kind of anonymous middle style, but it stays readable, and it's quick without feeling like you're being hustled.
There are lots of insights here, and nearly everyone is disarmingly casual about having lives that are haunted by some pretty terrible moments in their past. I don't know if it's an affectation or most Koreans see themselves as the living survivors of some titanic accidents, but it certainly kept my interest, even if I read through my fingers whenever anyone in this book took a stroll down memory lane.
In fact, the plot is the awakening of a sleeper agent from the North who has been in Seoul for twenty years and built a life, as he tries to decide what to do. We also see his wife and fifteen year old daughter and a couple other characters go about their days, and in the process, I think we do get a legitimately panoramic view of contemporary (and even twenty years worth of) Korean culture. It's a smart and insightful book and if you weren't naturally curious about what life is like on the Korean peninsula in kind of an NPR way, I don't know that you'd like this much at all.
I am that kind of reader, and I enjoyed this enough to want to read other books by this author. He writes well-- there are some stylistic touches early on of a kind of stripped down prose that evokes a less downwind Marlowe, though the book regresses to a kind of anonymous middle style, but it stays readable, and it's quick without feeling like you're being hustled.
There are lots of insights here, and nearly everyone is disarmingly casual about having lives that are haunted by some pretty terrible moments in their past. I don't know if it's an affectation or most Koreans see themselves as the living survivors of some titanic accidents, but it certainly kept my interest, even if I read through my fingers whenever anyone in this book took a stroll down memory lane.