(no subject)
shoroko has been really into spy stuff over the past year or so, and last year she recced me Your Republic Is Calling You, a Korean novel about a North Korean sleeper agent who's recalled home unexpectedly after about twenty years in South Korea.
This book is not James Bond, or even John Le Carre. The intelligence work is not the point -- though when it does show up, it's clear that it's the much quieter, long-term sort of spying that I wish I saw more of in fiction, in which aggregated information means significantly more than THE KEY PIECE OF PAPER!! at THE KEY MOMENT!!
Anyway, Ki-yong's spy story is only about a third of the book. He also has a wife and daughter, who are just kind of bopping through their days having adventures in COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GENRES while he's running around trying to get in touch with his old contacts and coming to terms with his feelings about North Korea and South Korea and the things he misses and the things he's gained and the things he's given up, and of course also wondering if he's going to be executed the minute he returns, minor detail.
Meanwhile, his wife is having adventures in torrid affairs with twenty-something hipster assholes, which ... leads some depressing places and was not my favorite part of the book.
And meanwhile meanwhile, their daughter is having a cheerful school story! Hanging out with friends! Having a crush on a boy! No real problems here!
For about 90% of the book all of these stories are almost completely separated, which is part of the point -- if there's a theme to the novel, it's the disguises people wear, and how that keeps them apart. The story's real climax comes when Ki-yong finally has to tell his wife the truth (after three hundred pages of everyone living completely separate lives), and face for the first time how the deception that he's been living has affected, not just him, but her; that scene's probably worth signing on for. I didn't love the book, but I thought it was worth reading.
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