Long for This World: A Novel

by Sonya Chung Narrated by Hillary Huber

Overview

In 1953, on a remote island in South Korea, a young boy stows away on the ferry that is carrying his older brother and sister-in-law to the mainland. Fifty-two years later, Han Hyun-kyu is on a plane back to Korea, leaving behind his wife and grown children in America. It is his daughter, Jane-a war photographer recently injured in a bombing in Baghdad and forced to return to New York-who journeys to find him in the South Korean town where his brothers have settled. Here, father and daughter take refuge from their demons, unearth passions, and, in the wake of tragedy, discover something deeper and more enduring than they'd imagined possible.



Long for This World is a pointillist triumph-depicting whole worlds through the details of a carefully prepared meal or a dark childhood memory. But author Sonya Chung is also working on a massive scale, effortlessly moving between domestic intimacies and the global stage-Iraq, Paris, Darfur, Syria-to illuminate the relationship between troubled world affairs and personal devastation. The result is a profound portrayal of the human experience, both large and small. Long for This World establishes Chung as a thrilling new voice in fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

When Han Hyun-ku appears on the doorstep of his younger brother’s home in Korea nearly 40 years after he immigrated to America, the far-flung members of the Han family find their lives unexpectedly intersecting in this elegant debut novel. Han Hyun-ku’s adult daughter, Jane, a photojournalist who narrowly escaped death from an explosion in Baghdad, follows her father to Korea, inwardly pleased that he has left behind her alcoholic, self-centered mother. Meanwhile, Jane cannot shake her memories of the harrowing experience that ended her longtime relationship with her ex and sent her to Baghdad. In Korea, Han Jung-joo, Han Hyun-ku’s sister-in-law, accepts the arrival of these unexpected guests with her usual serenity, but as her worry for her pregnant, troubled daughter grows, the household begins to break apart. Han Jung-joo’s younger brother, a divorced artist, arrives, precipitating events that change everyone’s lives forever. Switching deftly between different characters’ points of view, Chung portrays with precision and grace each character’s struggle to find his or her place in the family and in the world. (Mar.)

Library Journal

The title of Chung's exquisite novel seems to be missing a word: "not long for this world" would be the easy, expected phrase. But little is easy or expected in this multilayered story of two brothers—one Korean and the other who chooses to become Korean American—and their scattered families, whose lives converge in a perfectly blended East/West house on a faraway Korean island. When Han Hyun-ku unexpectedly arrives at his younger brother's home, he is escaping an American life circumscribed by a detached wife and troubled son. His exhausted daughter, Jane, a renowned photojournalist of death and destruction, follows her missing father. Strangers that they are even among family, father and daughter are gratefully absorbed into a seemingly easy rhythm, but the temporary peace cannot ease inevitable tragedy. "Some people are not long for this world," Jane remarks. "The rest of us survive." VERDICT Readers who enjoyed superbly crafted, globe-trotting family sagas such as Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows, Naeem Murr's The Perfect Man, or Changrae Lee's A Gesture Life will swoon over Chung's breathtaking debut. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/09.]—Terry Hong, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, Washington, DC

Kirkus Reviews

Modernity and distances both geographical and psychological upend a South Korean family. As noted in the indispensible prefatory character list, the Han family is divided into two branches. The American offshoot is headed by Han Hyun-kyu, a New York City surgeon whose marriage to alcoholic psychiatrist Lee Woo-in is foundering. Their two adult children, sensitive Henry, recently released from rehab, and his photojournalist sister Jane, on leave after her near-fatal brush with an I.E.D. in Baghdad, have more trauma in store-their parents' impending breakup. Meanwhile, in South Korea, Hyun-kyu's younger brother Jae-Kyu, also a surgeon, is leading a prosperous but not unduly ostentatious life in a small farming town. But the surface tranquility of the Korean Hans masks dark undercurrents. Jae-Kyu's pregnant daughter Min-yung is closeted in her childhood bedroom, suffering from a mysterious illness-or is it just the unexplained absence of her feckless husband Woo-sung? Jae-Kyu's spouse Jung-joo, with the help of housekeeper Cho Jin-sook, runs a household as tightly buttoned-down as her inner life. Exposition filtered through multiple points of view takes up much novelistic space, but the action accelerates when the Korean Hans receive a surprise visit from Jae-Kyu's American brother, who's gone AWOL from job and family. Seasoned globetrotter Jane handily tracks down Hyun-kyu and follows him to Korea, where they eventually wear out their welcome. Jane and Min-yung forge an instantaneous connection that has disastrous consequences. Although Chung occasionally relies too much on sudden death to add pathos, her characters are well drawn, particularly the women (except for Jane, who seems to havebeen plucked from another novel). But the sheer proliferation of voices clamoring to be heard mutes the narrative power, as does the overly complex subdivision of this short work into books, sections and subsections. An impressive but structurally unwieldy debut.

From the Publisher

"An intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new." ---Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of Women

SEPTEMBER 2010 - AudioFile

As Hillary Huber gently delivers this story of a Korean boy filled with wanderlust, her warm voice fills the text with the hopes and dreams of youth. She deftly manages the large range of characters, settings, and time spans, ensuring that this epic story of several generations, taking place across many countries, is easily followed by the listener. As the story moves between the present and the past, Huber maintains a connection between the kaleidoscope of main characters and the unfolding plot. Much of the narrative includes the thoughts of characters and reflections on life in Korea and the Korean immigrant experience. M.R. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170896202
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	03/22/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Flight (1953)

The eldest brother was twenty years old when he left the island. His wife was eighteen. It was good fortune, the heavens smiling down upon him, that he was offered the position teaching sciences at a junior high school in Kyongju. He was young for the position, and less qualified than the other candidates, but the principal of the school was his wife’s great-uncle and wanted to give the young couple an opportunity to move to the city.

The eldest brother hated the island. He felt trapped, did not like the feeling of being watched, and known. He wanted his independence, to start his own family afresh, and did not want his children to suffer the boredom and small-mindedness of island life. He knew everything there was to know about everyone in the village and did not like any of it. He did not like that nobody cared what was happening in the rest of the world. He did not like that every young man knew his future from the time he was a young boy—that he would take over his father’s rocky plot of land, or rickety fishing boat. He did not like that learning to read and write Chinese characters, the standard pen for literature, was seen as a betrayal by the older generation. He did not like that the girls and boys were paired off when they were fifteen and sixteen years old—like animals, good only for procreation. He did not like that sometimes his uncle took one of his girl cousins into the back room and pulled the curtain closed, and that other men did the same with their daughters and nieces.

So when the opportunity came to leave the island, the eldest brother took it without hesitation. He and his wife packed a small trunk and were ready to leave within days of accepting the position. They did not yet know where they would live, but his wife’s great-uncle would allow them to stay with him until other arrangements could be made.

His younger brother Hyun-kyu—next in line among the three sons—was about to start high school. Hyun-kyu begged his brother to take him along to Kyongju, to the city. He was a good student and had been studying hard. He wanted to leave the island as well. He wanted to go to college. From the beginning, the eldest brother had discouraged him from clinging to such far-fetched ideas, but Hyun-kyu was determined. Now that he was almost fourteen, he knew that the village high school—ten slothful boys and an ajjummah who knew little more than her students—would be of no use to him. And the village library was running out of books for him to read. Hyun-kyu begged and begged, but his brother refused him. There would be no room at the great-uncle’s house, and certainly he and his wife would not be able to afford more than a one-room apartment. The eldest brother needed to make his own plans; he could not look out for anyone else. It pained him to think of it, leaving his sisters and brothers to fend for themselves, but he swallowed his guilt. He turned toward his own life.

The eldest brother and his wife arranged for the ferry to take them across the sea—a passage of some five hours, in good weather—early one Sunday morning. It was barely light out; the ferryman preferred to make the journey early, when the sea was at its calmest. The darkness of that morning was Hyun-kyu’s saving grace: no one noticed as he slipped onto the boat and hid underneath a wool blanket that was thrown over a pile of rope and life preservers. By the time his brother discovered him, they were too far along to turn back.

The eldest brother was angry to discover Hyun-kyu’s trick; but underneath his anger, he was also a little bit pleased. This boy knows what he wants, he thought. His wife defended the boy and pleaded with her husband for compassion. The eldest brother feigned an even greater rage at her defense, and then relented. “Very well,” he said, keeping back a smile. “We will help him along.”

© 2010 Sonya Chung

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