Liam
Administrator
Hye-Young Pyun, The Hole: 3+
I really enjoyed this novel by a relatively young novelist making a splash in Korea. Her second novel, City of Ash and Red, is scheduled to appear in English later this year.
The Hole, meanwhile, is a fine debut: fast-paced and very well-plotted. The translation is plain and unobtrusive but I get the feeling that this is intentional, given the nature of the story.
The storyline involves a professional married couple in their 40s who suddenly find themselves at an emotional impasse (there's even talk of a divorce, though we don't find out about this until later on). She is a failed journalist, who has given up on her career and now stays at home obsessively caring for her garden. He is a geography professor specializing in ancient cartography who engages, now and again, in forbidden flings with colleagues and students. They are both of them living lives of quiet desperation.
Suddenly, everything changes. They get into a terrible accident on the road, driving to a getaway weekend destination. She dies instantly, he survives, but is paralyzed from the neck down (well, he CAN actually move his left arm a little bit, but that's about it). His jaw is broken, he cannot speak, and he cannot properly care for himself. His only living relative and thus his sole legal guardian is, ironically, his mother-in-law.
He is brought home from the hospital. At first his mother-in-law hires a live-in caregiver to care for him; after the bills begin to stack up and the woman is caught stealing, however, the mother-in-law decides to move in and to take care of him herself.
It is then that she comes across her daughter's private diary, which records the dissolution of her marriage and the petty misunderstandings between herself and her husband. Being a first-hand account, it is understandably biased. Already unconsciously resentful of the man for the fact that he survived and her daughter did not, the mother-in-law's attitude toward him changes profoundly after she discovers her daughter's private record of her failed marriage.
As he lies in his bed, unable to move, he watches his mother-in-law working in the garden. She is uprooting the plants and small saplings that her daughter had planted and digging a large hole in the middle. She says she is building a koi pond. Day after day, the hole grows larger, deeper and darker. So does the story.
I won't reveal the ending (although given the hints the author drops throughout the story it is not that shocking), but in keeping with the tone of the book, it is dark, frightening and devoid of any hope.
The novel is very well-plotted and some of the characterization was outright exquisite, I thought. However, you can tell that this is the work of a very young novelist, albeit one with enormous talent. I fully intend to read her second novel when it comes out in November. Meanwhile, a book of her early short stories is also available in English.
The jacket of my edition mentions that both the book and the author have become runaway sensations in Korea: if we have any Korean members perhaps they can elaborate if this is true?
All in all, a very good read: and I read it in just one sitting (my edition was just under 200 pages, with large (ish) print.
I really enjoyed this novel by a relatively young novelist making a splash in Korea. Her second novel, City of Ash and Red, is scheduled to appear in English later this year.
The Hole, meanwhile, is a fine debut: fast-paced and very well-plotted. The translation is plain and unobtrusive but I get the feeling that this is intentional, given the nature of the story.
The storyline involves a professional married couple in their 40s who suddenly find themselves at an emotional impasse (there's even talk of a divorce, though we don't find out about this until later on). She is a failed journalist, who has given up on her career and now stays at home obsessively caring for her garden. He is a geography professor specializing in ancient cartography who engages, now and again, in forbidden flings with colleagues and students. They are both of them living lives of quiet desperation.
Suddenly, everything changes. They get into a terrible accident on the road, driving to a getaway weekend destination. She dies instantly, he survives, but is paralyzed from the neck down (well, he CAN actually move his left arm a little bit, but that's about it). His jaw is broken, he cannot speak, and he cannot properly care for himself. His only living relative and thus his sole legal guardian is, ironically, his mother-in-law.
He is brought home from the hospital. At first his mother-in-law hires a live-in caregiver to care for him; after the bills begin to stack up and the woman is caught stealing, however, the mother-in-law decides to move in and to take care of him herself.
It is then that she comes across her daughter's private diary, which records the dissolution of her marriage and the petty misunderstandings between herself and her husband. Being a first-hand account, it is understandably biased. Already unconsciously resentful of the man for the fact that he survived and her daughter did not, the mother-in-law's attitude toward him changes profoundly after she discovers her daughter's private record of her failed marriage.
As he lies in his bed, unable to move, he watches his mother-in-law working in the garden. She is uprooting the plants and small saplings that her daughter had planted and digging a large hole in the middle. She says she is building a koi pond. Day after day, the hole grows larger, deeper and darker. So does the story.
I won't reveal the ending (although given the hints the author drops throughout the story it is not that shocking), but in keeping with the tone of the book, it is dark, frightening and devoid of any hope.
The novel is very well-plotted and some of the characterization was outright exquisite, I thought. However, you can tell that this is the work of a very young novelist, albeit one with enormous talent. I fully intend to read her second novel when it comes out in November. Meanwhile, a book of her early short stories is also available in English.
The jacket of my edition mentions that both the book and the author have become runaway sensations in Korea: if we have any Korean members perhaps they can elaborate if this is true?
All in all, a very good read: and I read it in just one sitting (my edition was just under 200 pages, with large (ish) print.