In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children, Bo, DH, and Mido, find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John's oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Sensitive ... The depiction of family solidarity in the face of hardship is touching, and to Ms. Lee’s credit she portrays it simply, without smarminess ... Has the drawbacks of the traditional novel along with its foursquare virtues. The book’s length and creeping pace are reminiscent of 19th-century tomes that had to be padded out to meet the requirements of serialization. Ms. Lee tends to telegraph her plot turns, especially those regarding the characters’ romantic fortunes, and then takes an eternity to arrive where the story is obviously going ... The danger of dullness is heightened by the writing, which is plain and informational to an extreme ... he polite reviewerese for this kind of writing is 'workmanlike,' and it often feels like work to get through it ... That there is still much to like about the novel speaks to the charm of its earnest exploration of virtue ... Heartfelt.
Beyond irresistible storytelling, Lee expertly confronts broken systems, familial expectations, and peripatetic identities with empathy and brilliance.
