8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster

May 15, 2023
A North Korean woman recounts a dramatic and traumatic life. The protagonist and occasional narrator of Lee's smart, complex debut contains multitudes. Asked by a writer to describe herself, she responds: "Slave. Escape-artist. Murderer. Terrorist. Spy. Lover. And Mother." In the pages that follow, she describes all those roles and more. During her childhood she poisons her violently abusive father. During World War II she's taken by the Japanese army and sent to a "Comfort Station" in Indonesia where she and others are routinely raped by soldiers. During the Korean War she translates for U.S. troops whom she is eventually determined to undermine. After the war she settles into a more comfortable life in Pyongyang, but her survival skills make her both insular and an expert at deception--a perfect temperament for a spy, which is a gift (and burden) she passes on to her daughter. Though Lee jumbles the timeline somewhat, it's clear that the trickster of the title has had to develop a Scheherazade-like talent as a storyteller and deceiver as survival tactics, and Lee's style echoes the cool, unaffected delivery of someone who's seen it all. The narrator is defiantly proud, for instance, in describing her childhood habit of eating dirt: "I savored its taste, its tang and texture that are like no other in this world." But as her daughter, Mihee, claims more of the story in the novel's later pages, it's clear that a lifetime of abuse and deceit took a serious toll. Mihee has inherited her mother's wit and capacity to change personas as easily as clothing, but it means swallowing tyrannical treatment from men and the state, and Lee's understated approach puts the damage in clearer relief. An inventive, melancholy debut.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2023
A narrator, affectionately called "Ms. Writer," records the story of Ms. Mook, an old woman living her last days in a South Korean hospice. Though no one knows whether Ms. Mook's stories are the full truth, she tells of dealing with abuse in childhood, surviving the Japanese occupation as a comfort woman, navigating the Pacific War, falling in love in the North, defecting to the South during the Korean War, and changing her name and background to adapt and survive. She becomes a "trickster," describing her shifting lives as a slave, escape artist, murderer, terrorist, spy, lover, and mother. Though the eight stories that make up Lee's debut are full of death, loss, war, and other heartbreaking traumas, the overarching theme of love--familial, romantic, platonic, or parental--connects them all. Inspired by the author's great-aunt, Lee's beautiful novel is a tale of survival, trauma, and love in the midst of modern Korea's most tumultuous times. Her metaphorical and lyrical language, brutal and unsettling storytelling, and masterful prose will keep readers hooked until the very end.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 12, 2023
Lee debuts with an ambitious if overwrought chronicle of a Korean woman who has survived a century of famine and wars. The episodic narrative is framed as a series of interviews between an obituary writer and the elderly Ms. Mook, whose harrowing experiences began at an early age. She describes poisoning her father in 1938, to save her mother from his abuse, and her kidnapping by Japanese soldiers who force her into sexual slavery at a Comfort Station. There, she forms a bond with Yongmal, who helps her endure the violence. When the Americans bomb the station, Ms. Mook escapes. During the Korean War, she works as a translator at the Monkey House, a brothel where Korean girls are forced to have sex with American soldiers. Eventually, she frees the surviving girls and burns the place down. She makes her way to Yongmal’s husband in 1955 and allows him to believe she’s his long-lost wife, who died at the station from tuberculosis. Though the prose is a bit strained (“The sun was an ebullient eye in the middle of the acid-blue sky”), the protagonist’s harrowing and vibrant stories are hard to turn away from. This doesn’t always work, but when it does, it hits hard.