Princess Bari (2010) by Hwang Sok-Yong

Book Review

Princess Bari (2010)

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  Hwang Sok-Yong is one of South Korea's most famous novelists.  In 1993 he received world-wide notoriety after he was sentenced to seven years in a South Korean prison for unauthorized travel to North Korea.  Princess Bari is the story of Bari, named after the figure of Korean folklore.  She escapes harrowing circumstances in North Korea, where she is raised near the border with China.  Her father and extended family are significant officials in the local regime, but famine and a politically questionable relation lead to their downfall.  The family scatters, Bari ends up in semi-hiding in China, just over the border, before she manages to escape to London.

   There, the story becomes the familiar tale of the immigrant experience in contemporary London. As far as the second half of the book goes, the part which takes place in London, it is pretty rote- it's only the circumstances which Bari escapes from that make the western set chapters interesting.

Silverview (2021) by John Le Carre

Book Review

Silverview (2021)

by John Le Carre

   Silverview, the last novel by John Le Carre, was published posthumously this past October.  It's an entirely domestic piece of spy fiction, revolving around the death of a woman who was an important theorist in the Middle East division of MI6 and the subsequent investigation of her husband, also a spy.  The protagonist at the center is Julian Lawndsley, a 33 year old ex-"city man" (what we would call a finance bro) who has "retired" to open a book shop in a small East Anglican town.  There he meets Edward Avon, the aforementioned husband- a curious man with an indeterminate European accent who loves W.G. Sebald and The Rings of Saturn. That's Le Carre in a nutshell, a spy novelist capable of creating entire literary universes filled with secret agents who read W.G. Sebald (I love Sebald, but I've literally never met another human being who has even heard of him outside of those I have specifically told.)

  The spy stuff itself isn't 007 level, but then, when is it ever for Le Carre.  Lots of interviews and skulking about, and recriminations about actions taken in the past for God and Queen.  Le Carre will be missed, but at least he left 20 plus novels behind.

The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven (2021) by Nathaniel Ian Miller

Book Review

The Memoir of Stockholm Sven(2021)

by Nathaniel Ian Miller

   The Memoir of Stockholm Sven is the debut novel by American author Nathaniel Ian Miller. Owing equal debts to Jack London and Knut Hamsun, who are curiously never mentioned by the characters in any capacity, it tells the story of the life of Sven Ormson, a would-be intellectual who is unhappy working in the factories of Stockholm.  He decamps for a northern mining colony, only to be horribly disfigured in a mining accident.  Disconsolate, he seeks a new life in the even farther north, as a trapper and hermit.

  That is the set up and you won't be surprised to learn that Sven doesn't sit by himself in a cabin for the rest of the book.  People enter and exit his life, and it really is a whole life- the book ends after World War II, with Sven a senior citizen.  Great sub-arctic scenery and plenty of lonely philosophizing.   It's a promising vision from a young  American novelist- literally miles from your typical first book about post-college young people living in a major metropolitan area.  The third act drags and the narrative limps to its natural ending, perhaps in an attempt to evoke the "Memoir" of the title, but it's not a memoir at all, it's a novel, so I question the devotion to the form.

The Anomaly (2020) by Herve Le Tellier

Book Review

The Anomaly (2020)

by Herve Le Tellier

   2020 winner of the Prix Goncourt The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier arrived in English as a certifiable hit, both critical and popular, with the Prix Goncourt cementing one side of the equation and 800,000 in pre-translation sales securing the other.  Le Tellier combines genres: science fiction, thriller, relationship novel with a heavy overlay of Oulipian theory.  Listening to the English language Audiobook, the more esoteric aspects of The Anomaly were lost to me, but the more basic intake still proved fascinating.

   The Anomaly is one of those works of art whose appeal is irremediably compromised by divulging any significant detail of the plot- instead- it's the combination of genres and the critical and popular success that must draw the reader to engage.  So for fans of science fiction-psychological thriller-detective story genres and books that win the highest level of literary award, you deserve to give The Anomaly a spin.