Prickly, gorgeous ... There are no moments of total illumination here, just a beam shining briefly on a target before scanning restlessly onward ... One thing that hasn’t changed is what an outlandishly talented writer Choi is, her prose possessing an iron confidence in its own beauty. She favors complex, lightly punctuated sentences whose payoff comes late ... Choi is a writer who can be trusted to have a plan, and she sews the narrative up with a conclusion that’s almost impossibly heartbreaking — about which the less said the better. Some things you can see coming from miles away. But life, we’re reminded, retains its ability to surprise.
Formidable ... In ambition and scope, Flashlight moves far beyond Choi’s celebrated academic novels or even her more political books ... With Flashlight, Choi’s appetite turns omnivorous. The claustrophobic atmosphere that made Trust Exercise so intense has exploded. She sweeps across decades and continents ... Catholic in its genre, shifting deftly from domestic drama to international thriller, from academic satire to bildungsroman ... The success of Flashlight stems from its ability to capture the minds of these characters with both sympathy and a touch of irony that provides just the distance we need to breathe ... Choi’s storytelling method is calculating but uncompromising ... A hundred pages in, I felt like I was developing Stockholm syndrome with this novel: I couldn’t wait to escape its fierce control and then couldn’t wait to crawl back to it ... Too often, I was disappointed to finish a page and realize it could have been trimmed to a single crisp sentence ... Choi’s determination to chronicle every pulse of her characters’ lives is both the novel’s strength and its burden. Even a work this fascinating shouldn’t presume upon a reader’s infinite patience.
Satisfyingly layered ... Excellent ... In part an episodic family saga structured by the passage of time rather than the pressures of a story arc ... That Ms. Choi manages these swerving, even outlandish, dramatic twists without flattening her characters is this novel’s outstanding achievement. Flashlight investigates secrecy and coverups on the private, psychological plane and on the level of international intrigue.
Choi writes memorable characters ... Where Choi’s writing is not as strong, though, is in the plotting ... A hugely ambitious book and it gets us to an interesting place, with insight into shocking, real-life events that deserve the attention Choi brings to them. It’s just that you’ll have to be patient to get there.
Beguiling if baggy ... Choi weaves long, sinuous sentences ... The author could have trimmed rhetorical flourishes and excessive explication, shaved off a few adjectives and adverbs; yet the power of Flashlight derives from its exacting psychological portraits ... She brings her impressive literary toolbox to bear here, and the novel ranks among her best work.
Ambitious ... Choi has set out to shine a flashlight, if you will, on a series of historical wrongs, the worst of them committed by North Korea. By the end of this novel, the author’s research into these machinations, and some of their brutal human ramifications, including re-education camps, nearly swamps the book — the narrative begins to feel like reportage, like didactic historical exposé ... Most profound when it, too, pays attention to emotionally knotty children and young adults. Choi has a profound gift, one I find consistently moving, for making their dilemmas universal ... Choi is in thrilling command before the book’s scaffolding, supportive but ungainly, begins to assert itself over the edifice.
Plodding along in an intimate, often banal story of one family’s tragedy in the first half of the novel, the pacing can seem to drag but the form also evokes how memory can linger in vivid detail ... Choi is able to weave personal stakes, under-discussed history, and geopolitical forces together to form a propulsive second half ... The characters in Flashlight are complex, sometimes stuck in their ways. Each carries their own shard of a bigger story, accidentally cutting themselves and others on the sharp edges. Putting the pieces together wouldn’t render a complete picture, but it can form a beautiful mosaic.
Choi’s latest novel feels leisurely as she brilliantly shines the titular flashlight on each of her characters, catching their habits and quirks, exposing their intimacies ... pushes the boundaries of family, ethnicity, society, country, and history by challenging, parsing, and piecing together the complicated multitudes of tangled identities.
Choi's ability to make coincidences seem inevitable makes this a delicately balanced drama ... Choi feeds to readers seemingly disparate clues that coalesce in a tale of espionage and global conflict, and the heartrending ways in which world struggles play out in individual lives ... Choi has a gift for instilling empathy in readers as she shows her characters' flaws.
Challenging and volatile ... Overly dense with historical detail, especially in its first 50 pages, but once it gets going, it’s an astute portrait of political upheaval, family dynamics and the constant need to recalibrate one’s expectations. The novel is an intellectual workout, but a rewarding one.
Never sentimental, never predictable, this aptly titled novel illuminates dark passages both fictional and real ... What’s sort of amazing is that a novel with such a locomotive of a plot—and give it a chance, because it doesn’t rev up right away—could just as reasonably be described as character-driven, devoted to unfurling the personalities and destinies of its three point-of-view characters ... This is not an easy novel, but it has important things to say, and Choi is a writer you can trust to make the journey worthwhile.
Ambitious if digressive ... Though long sections of character development often fail to gel with the main events, Choi’s well-shaded characters are also the book’s strongest element, particularly as she sharply delineates the difficult relationship between Louisa and Anne, who often treat each other more like housemates or acquaintances than mother and daughter. This gripping story of a family in crisis is tough to shake.
