Spring on the Peninsula

February 26, 2024
Shin’s melancholic debut centers on a 30-something Korean man in Seoul who’s just been left by his lover of nearly a decade. In the wake of the breakup, Kai latches onto his friends Han, Jung, Min, and the “markedly glamorous” Yoon, whom Kai “like most in the world.” The graduate of an expensive international secondary school, Yoon attended class with Korean Americans and other foreigners with no Korean heritage, a milieu that allows Shin to probe matters of Korean national identity, upon which the opinionated and enigmatic Han has much to say: “Too many invasions, too many marauders have exhausted the Korean sensibility.... The Korean national character has sunk to its all-time low.” There are also scenes of startling violence—Kai’s occasional lover, a young hairdresser, ferociously beats her small child, and Kai’s brother is brutally hazed during his military service. Shin’s focus on such taboo subjects as Han’s heroin abuse and Jung’s abortion add to the novel’s provocative flair, though a central storyline never coheres. A cloud of sadness pervades over Shin’s diffuse canvas of contemporary Korea. Agent: Mark Falkin, Falkin Literary.

March 1, 2024
Shin's unforgettable debut novel follows 30-something Kai as he navigates a painful breakup in Seoul. Spending his evenings drinking in late-night bars and engaging in fleeting affairs with both men and women, Kai attempts to stave off the loneliness that's hounded him since his partner left. He treks up a mountain in a snowstorm, ill-equipped and overcome with a kind of manic, reckless abandon. He visits his recently separated parents, brooding over their decision to part ways. He trespasses on his brother's self-imposed isolation in hopes of rekindling their bond. Though his existential angst is poignant, his cynical derision toward others and morally dubious behavior makes him an unsympathetic protagonist. (Several of his sexual liaisons take a decidedly dark turn, forcing the reader to ponder the implications of a power imbalance in the bedroom--and Kai's capacity for abuse.) Obsessively agonizing over his partner's desertion, Kai becomes increasingly nihilistic--an ethos shared by his close friends, all of whom are facing their own crises. The perspective occasionally switches from Kai to his various friends, revealing not only their mixed feelings toward him but the toll that loveless relationships, addiction, violence, and warped self-image have taken on millennials. Shin suggests that the thread connecting their suffering is a sense of aimlessness, an inexorable void that none of them seem able to fill. Given that most of the characters are unlikable and the novel's milieu is relentlessly bleak, the reader can't be expected to feel a great deal of sympathy for Kai or his friends. But the skill with which the novel is crafted--blurring the distinctions between daydream, fantasy, and reality with lilting, metaphorical prose--is undeniable. Shin reinforces the directionless felt by her characters with a meandering, wonderfully unhurried plot. In the same way, the sense of disorientation prompted in the reader by the book's shifting perspective and formal experimentation is undoubtedly designed to mirror the uncertainty felt by the characters. Shin masterfully locates the individual struggle to find meaning within a broader discourse, tussling with notions of class, gender, sexuality, generational divides, and war. A snapshot of a generation hopelessly conscious of their parents' failures, at a loss as to how to proceed.

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April 1, 2024
Kai feels lost and haunted without his lover, a man who broke up with Kai but keeps dangling the possibility of getting back together in front of him. Centering on Kai and circling outward through various relationships, Shin's debut novel offers a sympathetic, freewheeling portrait of the dreams and fears of modern life as a thirtysomething in Seoul. Kai's friend Jung, a consultant, is having trouble finalizing her engagement; Han, a healer, develops an expensive drug habit; Yoon, who graduated from an elite school, is going through a divorce; and Min, a loafer, possesses a violent imagination. There are nameless others also connected to their group, including a hairdresser pressuring Kai for money and an American lieutenant colonel who marries a woman who resembles the one he truly loves. Shin captures the dynamics and perceptions simmering beneath the surface of her characters' complex interactions, whether during a single night of drinking or on a visit to the countryside. As their lives fall apart or come together, each asks, what should I live for?

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.