4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Profound and affecting, May 25, 2010
This review is from: Long for This World: A Novel (Hardcover)
Long For This World is a family saga, but it's not just a simple "story of us." The novel has an unforgettable plot that places the story in many realities, geographic and metaphysical. Although it explores the missed opportunities and tragedies of two branches of the Han family (one in America, one in Korea), Chung has deftly placed the story in the larger backdrop of the human family. The first death the protagonist Jane experiences is one in a distant Syria and it's part of her job as a photojournalist. She doesn't know it, but it will be one of several deaths in her life...each getting increasingly closer to home.
I agree with the other reviewers at this site who compared Chung's writing to Murakami and Chekhov. Chung's writing contains the crepuscular magic of Murakami and the fine-tuned alertness of Chekhov. She has a keen eye for human relationships and the ties that bind. Her probing gaze delves into the different rooms in the human heart, rooms of desire, despair, longing, escape, indifference, and discovers that sometimes it's in the empty rooms--the rooms we deliberately leave empty, thinking them redundant--that our destiny lies.
Long after I finished this book I was haunted by the characters and the choices they made. Although Long For This World is a page turner, my advice is to resist the temptation to rush through it. I urge you to slow down and savour it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Long for this World, April 9, 2010
This review is from: Long for This World: A Novel (Hardcover)
I was introduced to Sonya Chung and her first novel, Long for this World, at a bookstore author appearance and I anticipated liking it. Still, I was really impressed by how good it is and how compelling the characters and the story are.
The story is that of the members of the Han family, some of whom have emigrated to the United States and some who have remained in Korea. Told from the perspective of Jane, an American-born daughter of immigrants, it develops the personal stories and the emotions of a handful of characters and in so doing, explores a number of themes including: the Korean-American experience; the immigrant experience; family and sibling relationships; friendship and attraction; and ultimately, on how the currents on which our lives float are formed by people and events around us, some close and some at some distance in time and place.
The portrait of Jane, the narrator, a photojournalist, is a real achievement. I was interested in her as soon as the story began and she just kept becoming more fascinating throughout the book. Making her a photojournalist and in fact a war correspondent was a very good artistic decision. It allows the author to describe events and characters visually within the media of a novel that is after all created of words and in that way, abstract. Jane views the world through a camera's lens and we see it framed in ways that she chooses. It is a very effective device. At her presentation, Ms. Chung indicated that she had worked hard to render this character realistically despite the fact that she herself had little personal experience with photography or photojournalism before researching for the book.
There seems to be conversation at how this book speaks to female readers especially. I would like to add that I find the portrayal of male characters especially engaging. As an older man, father of three grown daughters, I identified with the immigrant physician Han Hyun-kyu and understood deeply his need to return to Korea and take a different look at his life and his world. He is an especially silent man but his character is somehow eloquent at conveying an unidentified longing for something more. (Note the title).
In Korea, we are introduced to Chae Min-suk, a visual artist, who helps move the plot forward, but whose personal life and art are of great interest as well. I was especially impressed with the depiction of Jane's younger brother Henry. His struggle with addiction and recovery, and his sister's sense of responsibility for him, is central to understanding her and her family. His is a different kind of "longing" and I was left thinking a lot about him and his relationship to his sister. I believe that Ms. Chung has succeeded wonderfully at writing a book about interesting men who deserve our attention and who have something to say to us, both male and female readers.
Jane's mother, pointedly referred to as Dr. Lee even by her own children, is a complicated and difficult character. The author has written honestly about her and the damage she inflicts on her family, but I still found the description of the character respectful and ultimately understanding.
One reviewer has commented that Ms. Chung's exploration of the history of the Han family makes readers want to examine their own. I had that same sense. I felt that if I could provide Ms. Chung with stories about my own immediate and extended family, she could develop an exciting, descriptive narrative to help make sense of it all.
Sonya Chung's writing reminds me of Chekhov. I think it might be the development of character and family relationships through attention to small but significant details and events.
Another reviewer compares reading Long for this World to attending a photo display at a gallery, but in such a way that the reader is required to make the connections between the images displayed and any larger meaning of the book. I agree that we are treated to a number of very vivid images but I feel that the novel is also tightly structured and very effective in narrating a larger, comprehensive story.
The title is wonderful and promises what the book delivers. The cover photo of the hardcover edition is also perfect and this visual image conveys the tone precisely. I am sure it will entice some readers to the book.
Long for this World is a fascinating and compelling read. I am recommending this book to friends and I eagerly look forward to reading more of Sonya Chung's work in the future.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Resonance, March 8, 2010
This review is from: Long for This World: A Novel (Hardcover)
Long for This World by Sonya Chung, Scribner, 270 pages
Reviewed by John Lehman of [...]
Let me be upfront with you, this is a beautifully written story that takes concentration. It is layered both in subject matter and in emotion. It's one where you dog-ear the "Main List of Characters" at the beginning of the book and return to it often. Sections of chapters not only change setting, but sometimes countries and time periodS. At first I found this complexity a fault, wished the author had spared me her pointillist approach, but then about half-way through the parallel lines start to intersect and like a masterful poem it is not longer someone else's story, it is our own.
As a Westerner (who has been to Korea) there is a tendency to think of the East in a feng shui kind of way. As Sonya Chung says of Han Jung-joo, one if the troubled women in Korea whose husband is a prosperous doctor and whose troubled daughter dies while pregnant, "One must focus on the tiny actions that make up the events of one's life. .. If one tends to the small things, the larger things fall beautifully into place; order is created and maintained." Except that it doesn't happen like that, at least in the way we expect it will.
Another surprise is that the author does an equally good job with understanding the males of the story as with the females, the young and the old (though the interchange between the American, Ah-jin and the daughter of her mentor concerning mothers and daughters occasioned by a photograph of a young Kenyan girl who'd undergone female genital mutilation is exquisite. Such dynamics are the heart and soul of this book which isn't afraid to ask questions like, what is home, family, love, and gives us the courage to ask them of our own experiences.
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