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A review by ejrathke
Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin
4.0
There's much to love about this novel. In some ways, it's sort of an inverted Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata.
The way it deals with identity and especially social ostracization due to racist Korean attitudes is very subtle but also powerful. I imagine this is something easy to miss if you've never spent any time in Korea, but the narrator is biracial, which is viewed sometimes rather unpleasantly by Koreans. Along with that, her mother isn't married, which is another layer of degradation to many Koreans.
But, yes, a sometimes frustrating work with the flat affect of many current American novels that I find so unpleasant. But, even so, there's much to love here. A delicate beauty and sorrow.
The way it deals with identity and especially social ostracization due to racist Korean attitudes is very subtle but also powerful. I imagine this is something easy to miss if you've never spent any time in Korea, but the narrator is biracial, which is viewed sometimes rather unpleasantly by Koreans. Along with that, her mother isn't married, which is another layer of degradation to many Koreans.
But, yes, a sometimes frustrating work with the flat affect of many current American novels that I find so unpleasant. But, even so, there's much to love here. A delicate beauty and sorrow.