Skull Water

Saudade, or the nostalgic longing for something that doesn't exist. It's like a Korean Stand By Me - evoking something at once familiar and resonant but wholly different than my own experience. As a second generation Korean-Canadian am I just tokenizing my own culture? Maybe it's just my version of the Western Cowboy mythos that instead tugs at some idealized Korean sentiment.

How do I explain? Insu is a biracial Korean/German coming of age in a Korean army base during the early 1970's. He's an amalgam of three generations of my family from my folks growing up on the peninsula beneath the shadow of the Korean War, my free-wheeling youth in an age before cell phones and social media, and my own biracial Korean/Dutch-German daughter. It evokes so many of the small towns I visited on my repeated trips to Korea, the funeral mounds in the hills we'd tend to for Chuseok, the lingering presence of the American military, and the barter and grift culture that still pervades. It's a story that tugs at something foreign yet strangely familiar.

Insu is returning to Korea after some time away in the United States which provides a familiar lens from which to view his days spent with his friends around the military base. But in this Korea the black market hustle and hidden club houses comes up against Taoist alchemy, geomancy and transexual shamans. It gets at the unique tensions between the old and new, East and West, Korean Han and American optimism.

Insu is generally large-hearted and sincere, able to navigate the world with adolescent brio. The women here have a different experience and the routes they take through the world carry echos of the Japanese occupation and the continued American presence. Hella Han.

I'm grateful to Spiegel & Grau for reaching out with an advance copy, and so totally nailing what is obviously the white hot centre of my reading wheelhouse.