Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: Hongo/ Stingray Author: Kim Joo Young (Inrae You Vinciguerra and Louis Vincinguerra are translators) ISBN: 978 1 56478 959 4 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Type of book: 1950s, small farming village, missing father, South Korea, travel, abandonment, survival, rumors, seasons, memories, creations, secrets, growing up, coming of age, moving on Year it was published: 2013 (original 1998) Summary: Hailed by critics, "Stingray" has been described by its author as "a critical biography of my loving mother." With his father having abandoned his family for another woman, Se-young and his mother are forced to subsist on their own in the harsh environment of a small Korean farming village in the 1950s. Determined to wait for her husband's return, Se-young's mother hangs a dried stingray on the kitchen doorjamb; to her, it's a reminder of the fact that she still has a husband, and that she must behave as a married woman would, despite...

Name of Book: Singmuldeurui sasaenghwal/ The Private Life of Plants Author: Lee Seung-U (Inrae You Vinciguerra and Louis Vinciguerra translated the novel) ISBN: 078-1-62897-116-3 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Type of book: 1990s? injury, sins, atonement, relationships, star crossed lovers, love triangle, forbidden love, doomed tree myths, photography, mistakes, Korea, songs, symbols, secrets Year it was published: 2003 (2015 translated) Summary: The Private Life of Plants is about the ways in which desire can both worsen and mitigate our flaws. We meet amputee sons whose mothers cart them from brothel to brothel; we meet brothers who love their brother’s lovers, and whose lovers in turn are stolen away by the husbands of their sisters. Sexuality in all its ugliness and wonder is put under the microscope by Lee Seung-U, who reminds us that love may come in various forms, but that it is, nonetheless, a force that unifies us all … whether we like it or not. Characters: T...