Customer Reviews

Miles from Nowhere

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book will surely have those who wish to ban anything that isn't saccharine sweet up-in-arms. It is an disturbing story of a street child, complete with the rough language, drug use, and ugly images of activities that accompany street life. Yet, there is the beauty of friendship and the reaching for a better life by the protagonist that lift this tale to another level.

Nami Mun is a skilled author, and the reader is drawn into the story full force. I found myself cheering for Joon and hoping that she would be able to lift herself out of the street life. I wanted her to succeed; I was unhappy when she chose to do the wrong thing.

This is not a book for the squeemish or for those whose narrow-minded vision would have any controversial book banished. It is, however, a book for those seeking an articulate, intelligent author who can make you cheer for the characters in the book, even if you disagree with their life choices and their actions.

I discussed this book to a pretty great length with several other readers and because of that lots of questions came up for me and I was able to think about this book in greater depth but it also left me with a lot of questions that I don't know the answers to!

The book started off great for me, Joon has runaway and makes a few friends in the shelter she is staying at. Great first few chapters that include working as a dance hostest and meeting a variety of other characters and doing some sort of crazy things.

Strange things start to happen, like Joon seeing what she thinks are angels and things with her family, things that didn't make total sense to me. I guess maybe I don't do so well with stories that aren't concrete because I definitely had a hard time deciding what was real and what she was seeing in her own mind. That was probably on purpose but I like to know what's going on!

I did like the way this book was written, in little fragments, similar I thought to 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, over Joon's teen years. We get to revisit characters from the beginning of the book and meet new ones. But also, because of that some of the characters are mentioned so briefly we don't really get to know them and understand their purpose in the book.

I wasn't very happy with the ending. It just ended and I wasn't really sure where things were left. So I guess I liked the premise and the beginning of the book and towards the end things didn't work for me as much.

This book was a bit harder to read that first I imagined. It is not a one day read, in fact, it took me 6 weeks to get through a bit at a time. Eccept for the main character, there is little to find on developing of other players in this novel. There are drug pushers and users; prostitutes and pimps and then there is Joon with all this swirling in addition to a dysfunctional family consisting of recent Korean immigrants, Joon's father and mother.

This story was an easy read, I blew threw it reading nights over a weekend. It held my interest just enough to keep me reading.
I didn't find the writing style difficult, as a matter of fact, the authors style is what kept me going. Especially over the drab or slower parts of the book.
It would have been nice to see the development of other characters, however, in this case, I can see the authors intentional lack of development for those characters. I was hoping she was trying to allow me as a reader to fully concentrate on the main character. I would have liked to have gotten into the main characters head just a little more.
With every flip of the page, I found myself wanting to know more and more about her, yet was dissapointed her character remained just a character in a book, never to take on a life in my imagination. I never got that feeling the character ever really came to life.
The subject matter contains disturbing content of a seedy urban underworld. And again, I thought there was lack of description of the full environment. Each page, I just had the feeling something was missing.
That was sad, I expected more. It was still a good read, but not a great one.

This story is very well written. Details of the plot are elsewhere, so I won't duplicate them here. Other reviews mention that the plot is episodic, and remark that the episodic plot detracts from the work as a whole. Plenty of works are episodic; among them are great works like The Odyssey and Gulliver's Travels. Obviously, I don't agree that an episodic structure necessarily weakens the work as a whole.

This book reads like a set of connected short stories.

Many times while reading the novel I came a cross a marvelous turn of phrase, and I immediately was pleased and puzzled. Why can't more people write like this? The author is insightful and talented. Not every great writer has the talent or the will to create a cohesive, long, engaging narrative the first time out (or ever). Give this author a chance. She has written a fine debut novel.

Nami Mun's Miles from Nowhere deserves attention because it is such a compelling story, and it is such an unusual one, too.

It is the self-told story of Joon, a young teenage daughter of Korean immigrants in the Bronx. The story begins after Joon has run away, but only over the course of the book is the full story on her parents' relationship revealed to us.

She darts from shelters to third-rate motels to heroin addiction. She works the streets. She sells Avon. She sells dances. The only peace she finds is in the long subway rides she takes out to the terminal stop and back.

This book grew on me. The prose is very simple but also very driven by observation. It is easy to picture June's world - one of second story day cares, tire shops, abandoned gas stations, White Castles, and faded hair salon posters. Her voice is tragic and desperate. Joon seems to have no place to go, like the discarded doll that she watches one day, being pushed along by the stream of water in a gutter.

Again, the reader is led by the hypnotic spell that seeps through the trances that are Joon's thoughts. Sometimes the terror of her naivete and confusion jumps out. There is a scene toward the end that made me cringe. I was sure the book was about to end, or at least, the part with Joon.

The author bio hints that Mun has had many of the vocations (Avon lady, dance hostess, street vendor) held by Joon, and a few others that would provide excellent inspiration for insights into this world - criminal investigator and bartender.

Just a great book. I hope it gets a chance.

Miles From Nowhere tells the story of 13 year old Joon who runs away from a troubled home. With her father abandoning the family, her mother becomes mentally and emotionally absent. As Joon tries to find her place in the world, she increasingly feels no connection with her mother. She eventually decides to run away from home and the book details her life on the street and her struggle for survival.

Shortly after leaving home, she ends up in a homeless shelter where she meets some very colorful characters by the name of Wink and Knowledge. The way in which these two character were introduced, I assumed that they would be an integral part of her life. But just as quickly as they are introduced, they are out of her life without much explanation. Joon then drifts from place to place and situation to situation without finding any permanance. She works as a dance hostess, an Avon lady and a bevy of other random jobs. Somewhere along the way Joon picks up a nasty drug habit. She tries to quit but finds herself drawn back by her boyfriend and continues to spiral deeper and deeper into a narcotics fueled existence with its attendant consequences.

This a heartwrenching story because Joon is a victim of neglectful parents. One is exceedingly moved by the things that such a young child is forced to undergo all because her parents are lost in their own worlds. Her childhood is destroyed and she is forced to raise herself into adulthood. The vast majority of Joon's life is spent in hopeless and bleak conditions.

One of the main flaws of the book is that it is told in an episodic manner and this literary device eventually weakens the story. One is never able to fully connect with the story because just as you begin to get into some area of her life, you are immediately thrust into another chapter that deals with something unrelated. I think that the book may have also benefitted from having each chapter dated so that we are able to tell when exactly in her life the tale being narrated fits in. At the conclusion, the book just ended. There was no real wrap up, it was just over. But as much as the end left something to be desired, I appreciated the fact that Joon does not have a rags to riches end. Her future is uncertain but hopeful. You see that she is beginining to make strides into a better life but she is still perched at the edge. My rating: 3.5 out of 5.

This is the tale of a 12-year-old runaway from the Bronx, Joon-Mee. After her father leaves the family and her mother starts falling to pieces, Joon-Mee decides to leave home as well. She seems fearless in the way she handles her interactions at first, but she is obvious anything but. The cast of characters in her life include what would truly be the basics for your standard junkie novel...except there is more depth to these characters. Yes, in a way, junkie novels are all the same. It's up to the writer to make them stand out, make them different. They carry that burden. Nami Mun does an excellent job with this.

The story is beautifully written, and I got absolutely lost in the tale. The only real issue I had was that it seemed to jump back and forth between points in Joon-Mee's life at what feels like a haphazard pace. Also, it just ends. Just like that, it's over, and I really would have liked to see maybe a more fleshed-out conclusion.

This is a wonderful tale. I will be looking forward to more from this author in the future.

I found this gem in the sale bin at Border's and read it in two sittings. A very unusual story in that it busts the stereotype of brilliant Asians coming to this country and finding nothing but success and happiness.

It left me wondering how Mun could dredge up such sorrow and pain unless it happened to her which I don't think it did.

There is criticism of the book in that it's choppy and has no ending that wraps things up. One might want that in a book, but Mun's writing style fits the narrative and seems appropriate.

Very original and highly recommended.

Nami Mun's debut is nothing short of stunning. 280+ pages of raw human suffering, and somehow, the author has the ability to make the reader want more...not in any voyeuristic sense though. There's a certain participatory demand that is made of the reader if you choose to forge through Miles From Nowhere.

It is rare that an author's debut is so honest and compelling. There's a net of complicated characters that are weaved together by a teen girl named Joon, whose life itself is ove...more Nami Mun's debut is nothing short of stunning. 280+ pages of raw human suffering, and somehow, the author has the ability to make the reader want more...not in any voyeuristic sense though. There's a certain participatory demand that is made of the reader if you choose to forge through Miles From Nowhere.

It is rare that an author's debut is so honest and compelling. There's a net of complicated characters that are weaved together by a teen girl named Joon, whose life itself is overcome with addiction, mental sickness and death. Despite many of the harsh things that happen to Joon, that weird element of the human spirit pokes its head into many of the stories contained within, not necessarily providing hope, but a sense of honesty that most of us rarely admit to..."He had no idea that grief was a reward. That it only came to those who were loyal, to those who loved more than they were capable of."

I'll say this...I think this is a must read, but Mun's book is no light Sunday fair. Written beautifully, but emotionally taxing, Miles From Nowhere will likely be one of the better books I've read this year.