This book ended up being a real disappointment to me. I originally learned of it from a book list -- it was highly recommended and there were a bunch of great reviews here on Goodreads so I added it to my list. This was a few years ago... turns out this book was not easy to find! No libraries in the area had it, Amazon's copies were more than I really wanted to pay. So I added it to my wishlist on Paperback Swap. Four years later, and I received the book!
But the writing (or at least, I should say, the translation...) wasn't great. Many people likened it to Haruki Murakami and I guess I can see that in terms of many of the plot points. But the writing itself wasn't nearly as good as Murakami's. Sure, there was random weird sex that inserted it into the book, a few very surreal scenes, and even a (minor) character with an imaginary friend -- all very Murakami-like. But the writing and imagery didn't compare at all. Maybe it would in the original language, though.
And those are all the parts of the plot that I didn't care that much about. I wanted to hear more about his moral dilemmas, his feelings about being called back, his feelings about his new home, etc. There were a few really interesting parts, especially about the training that he'd gone through in North Korea trying to recreate the southern cities, how people who had been south were used to make the training seem more authentic, and how those same people tried to ask him to send messages south and he was horrified by it but once he was there for a while he understood. I would have loved to hear more about those things. Instead it was following his wife as she had sex with two guys at once, and his daughter as she chased after the cute boy in school. On the one hand, you want to give a sense of his family life, but it doesn't really give the impression of a family he'd want to stay for, even though it was clear he loved his daughter.
I think this book had the opportunity to be great, but came off kind of "meh". Probably there is another book out there that better captures what I was looking for.
But the writing (or at least, I should say, the translation...) wasn't great. Many people likened it to Haruki Murakami and I guess I can see that in terms of many of the plot points. But the writing itself wasn't nearly as good as Murakami's. Sure, there was random weird sex that inserted it into the book, a few very surreal scenes, and even a (minor) character with an imaginary friend -- all very Murakami-like. But the writing and imagery didn't compare at all. Maybe it would in the original language, though.
And those are all the parts of the plot that I didn't care that much about. I wanted to hear more about his moral dilemmas, his feelings about being called back, his feelings about his new home, etc. There were a few really interesting parts, especially about the training that he'd gone through in North Korea trying to recreate the southern cities, how people who had been south were used to make the training seem more authentic, and how those same people tried to ask him to send messages south and he was horrified by it but once he was there for a while he understood. I would have loved to hear more about those things. Instead it was following his wife as she had sex with two guys at once, and his daughter as she chased after the cute boy in school. On the one hand, you want to give a sense of his family life, but it doesn't really give the impression of a family he'd want to stay for, even though it was clear he loved his daughter.
I think this book had the opportunity to be great, but came off kind of "meh". Probably there is another book out there that better captures what I was looking for.
