So they keep it a secret from their friends and families-in fact, Harriet barely even admits it to herself, focusing instead on her grueling hours as a surgical resident. They’ve been part of the same boisterous friend group since college, and they know that their breakup will devastate the others and make things more than a little awkward. Wyn Connor and Harriet Kilpatrick were the perfect couple-until Wyn dumped Harriet for reasons she still doesn’t fully understand. Dusapin, who like her protagonist is of French and Korean heritage, has won several awards for her novel in Switzerland, where she lives, including the Prix Robert-Walser and the Prix Régine Desforges.Įxes pretend they’re still together for the sake of their friends on their annual summer vacation. The descriptions of daily life in the titular town are beautiful, elliptical, and fascinating, from the fish markets near the beach to soju-drenched dinners in local bistros to a surreal glimpse of a museum on the DMZ.
Higgins' exquisite translation from the French original is a pleasure to read. Instead, Dusapin depicts a fiercely intelligent, independent woman who longs to be seen clearly for who she is and the choices she has made, including leaving Seoul to help her aging mother. The woman observes the man and never looks at him as a savior or stereotypical lover.
Dusapin's novel avoids clichés in the woman's developing relationship with the lonely foreigner, who turns out to be an internationally renowned graphic novelist looking for inspiration for a new book.
Despite pressure to marry, the young woman is ambivalent about her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, Jun-oh, an aspiring model in Seoul. After work, she visits her mother, who works in the fish market and is renowned for her delicious octopus soondae. The novel unfolds in brief vignettelike chapters that reveal the unnamed woman's daily life. She has never met her father, a Frenchman who left her mother after a brief affair, but has studied French language and literature in school and dreams of traveling to the country someday. When a mysterious middle-aged Frenchman named Yan Kerrand arrives, off-season, in the midst of the winter slump, the woman is intrigued. An atmospheric novel about an independent young woman in a South Korean beach town.ĭusapin's debut novel depicts a young biracial Korean woman living and working in a small guesthouse in Sokcho, South Korea, a beach town 60 km from the North Korean border.
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