"Kyungha, a writer experiencing a health crisis (I can sense a migraine coming on like ice cracking in the distance), agrees to look after a hospitalised friend's pet bird. The friend, Inseon, makes films that expose historical massacres in Korea. At the centre of the book is a mesmerising sequence between dream and reality where Kyungha stumbles toward Inseon's rural home, blinded by snow, then finds herself in ghostly company."
"As the pace slows, and physical and psychic pain meet, the story only becomes more involving. This might be Han's best novel yet."
"It is the eighteenth of November. I have got used to that thought. Book dealer Tara Selter is stuck in time, each day a repeat of yesterday. Groundhog Day it ain't; this is more philosophical than comic why, she doesn't even bet on the horses but it's equally arresting."
Kyungha, a writer experiencing a creeping migraine, agrees to look after a hospitalized friend's pet bird while the friend, Inseon, makes films exposing historical massacres in Korea. Kyungha journeys blinded by snow toward Inseon's rural home and encounters ghostly company in a mesmerising sequence between dream and reality. The narrative slows as physical and psychic pain converge, intensifying immersion. The prose combines surreal, bodily sensation with political history, shifting between immediate interior experience and haunting communal memory, producing an affecting, involving exploration of trauma, sight, and remembrance. The interplay of memory and vision creates a persistent unease that lingers after the final scene.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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