Marie G. LeeReseñas

Trigger Warnings: Racism, classism, disabled slurs and bullying

Georgia is a Korean-American high school junior who just moved to a new town in the suburbs so that her brother, Leo, who has significant developmental disabilities, can get better assistance. At her new school, she makes friends with members of the hagwon that runs in the back of the Korean barber shop. Her parents have a rough relationship due to the strain of raising Leo and Georgie does everything she can to help be a caretaker of her brother.

I slightly remember reading Of Mice and Men in high school - not every detail, but I remember the ending, so I was very curious to see how this book would go.

This book definitely deals with a lot that I honestly wasn’t expecting. Georgia takes on a lot of responsibilities in the caretaking for Leo and I was always forgetting he was the older brother - even though she talks about how he’s a big, strong young man. I’m glad her parents were aware of the situation though and had brought it up to her a few times in the novel because it does take a toll on her for sure.

I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. I was rooting for Georgia and Leo and even though in the back of my mind, I kind of knew what would happen, I was still shocked at how the ending played out. It did come a little quickly for me, but I still liked the open-ending of it too.

This won’t be a book for everyone, but I still think it’s an important book that covers a lot of topics you don’t read about often.

*Thank you Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for a digital advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Gripping fiction about a Korean doctor attempting to live the American Dream, but haunted by his past.

This was an important book in terms of the subject matter. It deals with an immigrant Korean doctor(Dr. Kwak) who is an ob-gyn in a small town in Northern Minnesota. The timelines were fuzzy but I gather that the present was during 2016 etc. Dr. Kwak is forced into retirement when the big chain he works for closes the local hospital and he ends working for in a mall doing public hairr removal. The beginning of the novel is a very satirical look at health care in the present and was funny but a bit over the top. The book changes tone when it get's into Kwak's history during the Korean war and his subsequent coming to America. I found that part very educational as it portrays the relationship of both United States and Japan to Korea. My problem was with the way the novel moved back and forth through timelines and back and forth on the current medical versus the Kwak's history. It was a tough read but I did enjoy learning more about the history of Korea. The book ends with Kwak going back to North Korea as part of Doctors without Borders.½

fiction; satire / refugee story - middleaged Korean-American OB-GYN of rural Minnesota juggles unexpected career change (this is the satirical part) and family turmoil (wife growing distant, daughter-in-law is terribly racist and insulting) when his past (war trauma, family secrets) catches up to him

starts off ok but then starts to drag -- I got to p. 170 or so but gave up during Yungman's refugee flashback when pages and pages went by without having much idea of what was happening -- my brain just didn't care to put the work into it, and I could tell that I should be paying more attention (maybe if I had more background/interest in the War in Korea, which normally I would but not just now). Setting this one aside for now, but not sure I'll come back to it.

This novel is part family saga, part immigration story, part critique of the American medical system/establishment. I really liked it, and I realized that I have read enough fiction and nonfiction about Korea that I can recognize the common historic threads in these books.

Yungman "William" Kwak has spent his career as the OB/GYN in small town Minnesota, after doing a residency in Birmingham, Alabama. As a Korean refugee, he took the positions available to him and was glad to have them and to get to practice medicine at all, after sneaking his way into taking the Korean medical school entrance exams--growing up during the Korean War, he knew hunger, death, disappearance, stealing, and the usual refugee life.

When the hospital is bought out and he is forced into retirement, he has to think. He meets his wife's church friends, and he thinks about the roads he did not take--and the road his wife did not take. He begins working for the same healthcare startup his son works for, and he vascillates between acceptance and horror. He thinks about his brother and his own guilt at abandoning him in Korea--and he finally opens all of the letters he has ignored over years. His guilt and wonder at how the years have flown lead him down a path he never expected to take.

I especially loved the parts about startup culture and American medicine--from buyouts, closing hospitals, profits, stock options, health care in mall storefronts, lawsuits, watches as surveillance tools, and more. Parts of SANUS made laugh, parts were horrifying--but it was all great.In some ways these satirical (yet not) bits did not mesh well with the more traditional family saga style of the rest of the novel--but I really enjoyed it all. I would love to read a dystopia or post-apocalyptic novel by this author, I think she could do a fabulous job because she has very clever and biting ideas.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with an egalley in exchange for this honest review.

Books with similar themes:
If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim
The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness by Shin Kyung-sook
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Dr. Youngman Kwak’s life has been all encompassing. He has survived the worst of Korean history, been a refugee, experienced the racism of Birmingham, AL and northern Minnesota. He is at loose ends when the hospital in which he has been employed suddenly closes and he is harboring a secret he has kept for years from his wife and child.

A well written, memorable saga, there is much to this book; many layers that intersect. It is poignant, humorous, entertaining, horrifying, engrossing. With evocative descriptions, there are thought provoking cultural and generational comparisons. I also appreciated learning more about the brutality visited upon Korea by Japan, Russia, China, and the United States.

I highly recommend this book.

My husband also read it and really liked it.

What a stunning novel! With amazing storytelling and a combination of social satire and devastating historical insight into the Korean War, The Evening Hero is the story of a Korean American doctor, from his childhood in war-torn Korea to the near future.

Dr. Yungman Kwak is almost a pathetic character, a nuisance to his wife, hopelessly anachronistic to his son, filled with guilt for leaving a brother behind in Korea. In Minnesota, he is surrounded by Finns named Maki who think he is Chinese and patients displaying anti-immigrant signs. His frustrated wife, who in Korea would have been a successful doctor, spends all her time volunteering at a Christian church run by the Kimm family.

After the rural hospital closes, Dr Kwak is forced to retire, but he has no hobbies, nor even a bucket list. His son Einstein Albert Schweitzer Nobel Kwak is part of a new venture and gets his dad a position in Retailicine, medical care offered in mall-based retail outlets. At the mall HoSPAtal, Dr. Kwak performs Brazilians on his ‘patients’.

In comparison to his life in America, the back story of how his family survived the Korean War, how he got into medical school, and the courtship of his wife, reveals a different man, a man of courage and persistence. It’s also a horrendous story of survival and loss. Continual war and devastation, from the Japanese occupation to the arbitrary division of Korea after the war, will likely be a revelation to most American readers.

“Sometimes, Yungman wishes he had something akin to a computer chip, a floppy disk he could just insert in his friend’s head and Ken would experience and learn and know exactly what he’d gone through, from age ten to now.”
The Evening Hero by Marie Myung-Ok Lee

When the doctor and his wife join with Doctors Without Borders to return to North Korea, the area he knew as ‘home’, he finally lives up to his name–The Evening Hero–for its never too late in life to fulfill one’s legacy and duty.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Seventeen-year-old Ellen Sung just wants to be like everyone else at her all-white school. But the racist bullies of Arkin, Minnesota, will never let her forget that she’s different—the youngest member of the only Korean-American family in town.

At the start of senior year, Ellen finds herself falling for Tomper Sandel, a football player who is popular and blond and undeniably cute and to her surprise, he falls for her, too. Now Ellen has a chance at life she never imagined, one that defies the expectations of hanging out with her core group of friends or pleasing her parents.

I honestly didn't know that this book was originally published in 1992 when I started reading it, though I felt that it was set at a different era but still it was interesting to read.

It was beautifully written it was a fun light read about Ellen's final months as a high school senior. Its about how she manages to meet her parents expectations while trying to enjoy her senior year with her friends.

Also most importantly the book focuses on how Ellen overcomes the constant racism she faces from few of her classmates and teachers. Its really amazing how Ellen takes in all the racist comments and kind of uses it as a motivation to do better in what she is good at, ie , studies. At times I hoped that she would get some courage and confront those idiots!!

Though I feel if the book was set in 2020, the story would have been different and maybe Ellen would have found her voice sooner, I still enjoyed this book!!

Ellen is a Korean-American teenager in her final year of high school. Her story is about applying for college, gymnastics training, Ellen’s relationships with her best friend and her first boyfriend, dealing with racism at school and with her parents’ expectations that she will follow her sister to Harvard.

It’s very short, first published in 1993. I was aware of all the places where a YA novel written today would be allowed to give more details and to expand the story, but it was still interesting.

“The people who call me names don’t study,” I say. “I guess I feel I can use the negative energy to do something productive, like prepare to go to college while they’re preparing to live in Arkin and work as dental technicians.”
“What’s wrong with being a dental technician?” He is smiling, but I hear the challenge in his voice.
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “But it’s not a life I’d like for myself, so I think of studying as a way to get me to college and away from those people.”
“That’s a pretty complicated thought process to go through when someone calls you a name,” Mr Rose says.
“The hurt from someone calling you names is complicated,” I fire back. “It’s not easy to make it go away. The olden times were simpler: if your name was ever smudged, you could just challenge that person to a duel.”

The story of a city boy having to move to a small midwestern town. Life is hard and different, and uniting, and loving, and scary, adn the Korean uncle is a dick

A 6gth grade Korean girl still adjusting to America is struggling through her math class when she finds help from an unexpected source. A realistic story about the importance of telling the truth and not judging people before you get to know them. I enjoyed this story and how real it felt. (except that these kids went to the library every night and stayed late on school nights.)

This is kinda nice; I like it.

And I like that it's about women. (It's good to see that they're as vicious to each other as they are to me.)

And from the more sociological perspective: I had alot of Asian friends in high school, and they were very American: just like me. But gradually, with maturity, it dawned on me how very different things were with their parents. (Not that the white Baby Boomer parents were the heroes of perfection that they declared themselves to be...)

Anyway, it's just something worth understanding.

Assuming, of course, that I understand.

If you know what I mean. (" 'Korea is a man swirled,'--is that a common phrase in America?")

And it is kinda longish, although the quality of the writing is constant throughout most of it. (Not as much at the end...but even in tennis, it's hard to close.)

And yet, a sense of different-ness eventually settles in, like a film of dust that's settled on top on your dresser...when did it get there? But there it is...judgments I can't agree with, and never could have...as mysterious as an unforced error that should have been a winner...

(After all, the 'Wimbledon Effect' can be many things, but it sure isn't racist...so how's that for tennis-is-racist, eh? But, *oh moh*!, I forgot, everything her adoption-mother does is racist, *by definition*, since she's a paleface...just like her half-Korean friend Doug! ...And isn't that the sign of the nativist, always looking for a reason to exclude, and never looking for reasons to include...It sounds like they could use a 'Wimbledon Effect' of their own, or a Little New York, if you will--but! --*oh moh*!--that might encourage the Yankee scum and the *mongrels*! *sigh*)

But, what's prose is prose.

Although, even though it's supposed to be a Big Wheel, it starts to spin a little less smoothly towards the end. Or maybe I was just starting to get a little peeved that everything American or Nordic or non-Korean in culture had to be compared, on some level, to 'Gilligan's Island', or just straight-off dismissed as merely 'material', in a snobbish sort of way, intellectual, and yet somehow bound up with Blood in the most insecure kind of way...every cell-phone she saw in Korea proved that it was Not A Third World Country, but everything from Minnesota ('10,000 Lakes'!) or America was merely material, and that nonsense eventually eroded much of my original sympathy for her...I mean, unless you think it's fair to equate everything of Spanish-speaking culture with the wierdo announcer guy at the Mexican soccer games, the way she does with things she doesn't like, as if we were all too stupid to notice the difference between a malcontent-teenager and a grown-up...

(And, in case you were wondering, the epitome of Spanish culture is Rafa Nadal, or Feliciano Lopez. "Some people say it should be illegal." "Some people, are stupid. Estupido!" Also note: the epitome of being (a) *Danish* is *Caroline Wozniacki*. And anyone who disagrees with the previous statement is Not my friend--so there!)

Maybe I was just waiting for her to grow up...although I notice that some people don't. And, after a certain point, it doesn't matter if it's the miserable Irish Catholic childhood, or the Korean at the Norwegian table, or the fucking 'Captive of Kensington Palace', for that matter. If life's a contest, it sure ain't a contest for the Best Sob Story, that's for sure. Unless, of course, all you want is fucking *pity*, like a *baby*...

But, on the other hand, it all sounds realistic enough, and I guess I don't find any glaring faults *with the author*...

*shrugs* Because like I said, I've had alot of Asian friends, and the thing about having friends is, you learn to notice when they're trying to bullshit you, just like they do with you. *shrugs* And if they want sympathy, they can know that when my dad (ex-hippie) calls them 'idolators', I don't listen; I think he's an ass.

Although I could say it another way, and say that the fact that she can't seem to tell the difference between a gang of abusive American soldiers, and any old swearin' Yankee sailor, who doesn't act like a Fulbright Scholar *because he's not*, is what keeps the August Fulbright Scholar Lady from being anything more than an average novelist, even though God knows we couldn't put her in the same place as those *average* Minnesota people.

It's one thing to notice that the guy wearing the PRINCETON sweater is an asshole, but it takes a little more guts to do something about your own--to fold the damn thing up, and put it away where no-one can see it.

And if I had to choose one thing that me and my AP buddies didn't get, that would be it! (In this context, 'AP' does not stand for 'armor plating', but that's what we put around our hearts. If this novel can prove one thing, it's that it's the girls just as much as the boys, sometimes, at least.)

P.S. This might be Young Person Bias, but, even though the parts about her mother aren't poorly written, they aren't the same--they're even in third person, instead of first, like Sarah's. (N.B. Some of the complaints about her name seemed a little small-minded, to me...you know how it is: small-minded, All-Wise...) The mother's parts seemed a bit like a very very long afterthought, so I wasn't surprised when the author's end-note basically confirmed this, in so many words. And especially near the end, it was too much about the marital adventures of mom (with the guy who's not the father, even? Why not ignore him the way Ken is ignored? It is about women, after all...), and even though she may have felt Obliged to expand it to Half, because of Equality, maybe Sarah-talks-mom should have been less than Sarah-talks-Sarah.

In other words, if I penalized for excessive length the way I really ought to, I would've taken away more points. *winks*

P. P. S. Why be afraid of names that rhyme, just because they're semi-Euro? (Like Sarah?) Jim Kim, Marie Lee. Especially 'Lee', since it's ultimately just a consonant followed by a vowel, so it can be as Korean as it is Confederate, or as Confederate as it is Korean. (Unless she's trying to remind someone that she's part of some special tribe that other Korean people aren't a part of, LOL.)

(8/10)

Yep! Another mother daughter struggle. A young girl from Korea is orphaned, and grows up in the USA with an adopted family. She returns to Korea as a university age student, and the story moves between the present day of her live, and the birth mother's life ranging from 18 years ago to the present.½