This Burns My Heart: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Samuel Park (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 12, 2011

Chamara is difficult to translate from Korean to English: To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? Such is the burden Samuel Park’s audacious, beautiful, and strong heroine, Soo-Ja Choi, faces in This Burns My Heart, an epic love story set in the intriguing landscape of postwar South Korea. On the eve of marriage to her weak, timid fiancé, Soo-Ja falls in love with a young medical student. But out of duty to her family and her culture she turns him away, choosing instead a world that leaves her trapped by suffocating customs.

In a country torn between past and present, Soo-Ja struggles to find happiness in a loveless marriage and to carve out a successful future for her only daughter. Forced by tradition to move in with her in-laws, she must navigate the dangers of a cruel household and pay the price of choosing the wrong husband. Meanwhile, the man she truly loves remains a lurking shadow in her life, reminding her constantly of the love she could have had.

Will Soo-Ja find a way to reunite with her one true love or be forced to live out her days wondering “what if ” and begin to fully understand the meaning of chamara?

He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she’ll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.

Praise for This Burns My Heart:

“This Burns My Heart is quietly stunning—a soft, fierce story that lingers in the mind. Samuel Park is a deft and elegant writer; this is a very exciting debut.”

—Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry

"This Burns My Heart  is at once a passionate and sensitive love story and a fascinating historical novel set against the cultural dislocations of a rising South Korea.  In his heroine Soo-Ja, Samuel Park has created an emotionally resonant character that readers will root for and long remember."

—John Burnham Schwartz, bestselling author of The Commoner and Reservation Road 

"Both an epic love story and an intimate depiction of life in post-war Korea, This Burns My Heart introduces a singular heroine whose passions, struggles, and triumphs are mirrored in our own. Samuel Park is one of those rare writers whose talent transcends the limits of race and gender."

—Wendy Lee, author of Happy Family

“This Burns My Heart captured me with a heroine who is both irresistible and flawed, and engrossed me with increasing twists in a triangle of love and sacrifice. The story explores how a fateful choice colors a decade of marriage, and challenges a young woman’s ambition already constrained by traditional Korean culture. Sam Park paints all the flavors of post-war Korea in this vivid debut, and his understanding and expression of the human heart is universal.”

—Eugenia Kim, author of The Calligrapher’s Daughter

"Samuel Park's astonishing novel, This Burns My Heart, provides mesmerizing perspective into the life of a Korean wife and lover—intricate and intimate as only a woman's secret life can be."

—Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers 

“This Burns My Heart never loses touch with the human passion at the core of its epic romance.  Writing prose with the beauty of poetry, Samuel Park traces a young woman's journey to hard-won maturity, alongside the meteoric rise of post-war Korea, in a novel which shines with eloquence and wisdom.”

—David Henry Hwang, Tony-Award winning author of M. Butterfly

“This Burns My Heart is a delicate yet powerful story of love, loss, and endurance. The emotional world of the heroine, Soo-Ja, is beautifully realized; I found myself caught up in her dramas from start to finish, and was reluctant to part with her at the novel’s close. A lovely, romantic, haunting book.”

—Sarah Waters, author of The Little Stranger, Fingersmith, and Tipping the Velvet

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2011: Tradition, love, and sacrifice--in Samuel Park's novel, This Burns My Heart, these immensely powerful forces propel the struggles of Soo-Ja Choi in post-war South Korea. Soo-Ja starts out as a privileged young women straining against the suffocating traditions of her family and culture, yet it is her own allegiance that drives her to enter into a loveless marriage rather than break tradition and marry the man who knows her heart. Soo-Ja's marriage is a yoke she cannot shake, crushing her with familial servitude and hardship, but, like the culture itself, she perseveres--and true love follows her through the years like a message in a bottle waiting to be washed ashore. A heartrending story with a remarkable heroine who is both maddening and humbling, Park's elegant prose resonates with the quiet force of love in all its guises and a country struggling to be reborn. --Seira Wilson

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Amazon Exclusive: Janice Y.K. Lee Interviews Samuel Park

Janice Y.K. Lee is the New York Times best-selling author of The Piano Teacher, which was also a New York Times Editor's Choice, a Richard and Judy Summer Read pick in the UK, and published in 24 languages.

Janice Y.K. Lee: Samuel, it's a pleasure to be e-interviewing you. I only wish we could do it in person. I really enjoyed your book and found much to admire in it.

Samuel Park: Thank you, Janice. It's an honor to be doing this with the author of The Piano Teacher.

JL: Many elements of this book resonated with me; I think it speaks to a Korean experience common to both Koreans and Korean-Americans. This is your mother's story, you have said. Tell us about the process of novelizing it.

SP: I was inspired by a real life event that happened to my mother the day before her wedding: another man asked her to choose him instead of her fiance. My mother, of course, turned him down, but once her own marriage deteriorated, she often wondered, "What if." So the question that intrigued me was, What does it mean to pick X instead of Y? Do you still have the life you were supposed to have, or is it another life altogether? The book is about the consequences of the choices that we make.

JL: Korea as a country experienced incredibly rapid growth and transformation in the 20th century. How did you feel about having to write about such enormous changes in one book? Did you do research to find out what life was like in Korea in the mid-twentieth century?

SP: I did a lot of research. I wanted to capture the excitement and uncertainty of living through a sea change in a country's history. Soo-Ja's personal metamorphosis becomes a microcosm for the events happening around her. What happens to Soo-Ja, in essence, is what happens to South Korea: As Soo-Ja fights to escape poverty and become a successful businesswoman, her country too struggles to move from the devastation of the Korean War to its rise as one of the so-called "Asian tigers." She herself may be unaware of this, but her own experience is very much emblematic of the cataclysmic shifts.

JL: How do you think a non-Korean reader, tabula rasa in terms of Korean customs or family traditions, will react to the book?

SP: So far, the reaction I've got is that readers are intrigued by the cultural details of the book. Like hanbok, the traditional Korean gown that is often mistaken for kimono, but is quite different. Unlike kimono, which allows for little freedom of movement, hanbok is loose at the bottom, and you can practically run in it. This speaks to the paradoxical nature of gender norms in Korea, where mothers hold exalted, glorified positions, but until 1977 could easily lose custody of their children

JL: Family dysfunction is a common theme in novels. Can you talk a little bit about the inimitable Korean brand of family dysfunction? In particular, I'm thinking of the very illogical ways in which family members interact with each other, never telling each other facts that might solve problems, or brewing in martyrdom when everyone would benefit from a little honesty. You know what I mean!

SP: I know what you mean. In the novel, the father sacrifices much of his fortune to help his daughter. It's a very dramatic gesture, but it's also his only means to express love in a culture that isn't verbal or demonstrative of one's feelings. I'm generalizing here, but I think Koreans often use money as a means to express emotions otherwise kept repressed. I was interested, then, in exploring not only the way money corrupts family relations, but also how it creates powerful bonds between people. Koreans often measure the extent of their love by the amount of sacrifice they perform for the other person. It's beautiful and maddening at the same time.

JL: What did your mother think about the book?

SP: She hasn't read the whole book, but she liked the parts she read. At the end of the day, the book is a work of fiction, and my mother has a healthy separation between the character and her. She knows that she inspired Soo-Ja but is not Soo-Ja, if that makes sense.

Review

“An incredible read . . . I don’t want it to end. I love it!” —Hoda Kotb, Today

“Extraordinary . . . A page-turner of a book . . . South Korea provides not only the backdrop of Soo-Ja’s story, but also the context for Park’s novel, which spans the decades after the Korean War to the beginning of the country’s economic boom. In a sense, Soo-Ja’s story parallels South Korea’s development from a poor, struggling state to a gleaming Asian tiger.” —Chicago Tribune

“Memorable . . . Atmospheric and exuberantly filmic . . . a simple but visceral romance in a refreshing Korean setting.” —The Miami Herald

“Park does a good job of bringing the rapidly changing South Korea of the 1960s alive. As cities sprout from beanfields and rickshaws give way to Kias, the world around Soo-Ja and her family is changing at a frightening speed. . . . I especially recommend this novel to readers who were intrigued (as was I) by Lisa See’s Dreams of Joy, set in postwar China. The contrast is fascinating.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“This Burns My Heart is quietly stunning—a soft, fierce story that lingers in the mind. Samuel Park is a deft and elegant writer; this is a very exciting debut.” —Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife

“Vivid…atmospheric . . . Park’s descriptions of antigovernment clashes and the martyrdom of a 12-year-old boy, in particular, provide eerily prescient reverberations of recent clashes in Syria.” —Boston Globe

“Writing prose with the beauty of poetry, Samuel Park traces a young woman's journey to hard-won maturity, alongside the meteoric rise of post-war Korea, in a novel which shines with eloquence and wisdom.” —David Henry Hwang, Tony-Award winning author of M. Butterfly

“This Burns My Heart is a delicate yet powerful story of love, loss, and endurance. The emotional world of the heroine, Soo-Ja, is beautifully realized; I found myself caught up in her dramas from start to finish.” —Sarah Waters, author of The Little Stranger and Fingersmith

“An understatedly brilliant tale . . . Through Soo-Ja’s eyes, Park beautifully evokes 1960s war-torn South Korea.” —Audrey Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439199612
• ISBN-13: 978-1439199619
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #800,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Samuel Park is the author of THIS BURNS MY HEART, which was chosen as a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Amazon, BookPage, and NPR.org. It was also one of the Today Show's "Favorite Things" and a People magazine "Great Read in Fiction." His other work includes the novella "Shakespeare's Sonnets" and the short film of the same name, which he wrote and directed. He is an Associate Professor of English at Columbia College and has published scholarly articles and reviews for Theater Journal, Shakespeare Bulletin, and Black Camera. He lives in Chicago.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautful, Touching, Fantastic Book July 10, 2011

By Lisa

Format:Hardcover

This Burns My Heart is the story of Soo-Ja, a woman in post-war Korea who is having to forgo the life she desires to fit in with the customs and culture of her country. After a hasty marriage, Soo-Ja is soon trapped in a life of virtual servitude to her in-laws. As her life turns out vastly different to what she had imagined when younger, she continues to run into a man who she had quickly fallen in love with right before she got married. In Yul, she sees a life that could have been, full of love and comfort. Soo-Ja must decide whether to pine after that which she wishes she had or make the best of what she does have.

I absolutely loved this book! There was such beauty and grace to Soo-Ja. Never did she wallow in misery, even while wondering how her life would have been different if she had married someone else. She understood that her life was made by her choices. Soo-Ja had wonderful perspective on everything. I also really enjoyed the aspects of Soo-Ja's wants versus tradition. In a culture steeped in tradition, Soo-Ja knew there were certain expectations made of her. Although they did not make her life easy, she did the best she could to satisfy those traditions and make her own life as she saw fit. She was a beautiful example of adapting and making the best of all situations.

The writing was outstanding. Everything flows so well, and you get a real sense of who all the characters are. I was so moved by this book. This is the kind of book that makes you feel so many things, but in the end I was incredibly uplifted. I am recommending this book as highly as I possibly can. It has been my favorite book so far this year, and I am sure it will be on many "best of" lists to come.

Galley provided by publisher for review.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettable and beautifully written... July 26, 2011

By Arlene Greene

Format:Hardcover

This Burns My Heart is an unforgettable story of a young Korean woman, Soo-Ja. It is a story of passionate love, sometimes painful familial ties, and loyalty to ideals and traditions that suffocate a woman's freedom.
I will never forget the "...three Confucian obediences that must rule a woman's life...Obedience to father, obedience to husband, and obedience to male child." And I wonder what might have happened if Soo-Ja gave birth to a son instead of a daughter.
The scenes between Soo-Ja and Yul were so heartfelt and tender and believable that I could actually feel the denied passion between them. I was both surprised and happy to find that Min actually redeemed himself...he was quite hard to take throughout.
I finished it a few days ago, and it lingers in my mind. Many thanks to Sam Park for writing it--he has a unique talent for getting to the truth of emotions in relationships.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Written and Emotional July 13, 2011

By Book Sake VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This Burns My Heart had me hooked in the first chapter. The story is so beautifully written that you feel like you are experiencing Soo-Ja's emotions, as well as getting a picture in your head of what life must have been like in South Korea at the time. Being a fan of novels like The Joy Luck Club and Memoirs of a Geisha, I can say that this story won me over with the character development of Soo-Ja as she goes through struggles in a culture that is still ruled by men. I recommend this book to anyone that enjoys unrequited love, historical fiction, Asian cultures... really anyone that wants to get lost in a great story.

Reviewed by Gabi for Book Sake.