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Summary
Summary
A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of 2020
Disasters, accidents, and deaths abound in Bluebeard's First Wife . A woman spends a night with her fiancé and his friends, and overhears a terrible secret that has bound them together since high school. A man grows increasingly agitated by the noise made by a young family living in the apartment upstairs and arouses the suspicion of his own wife when the neighbors meet a string of unlucky incidents. A couple moves into a picture-perfect country house, but when their new dog is stolen, they become obsessed with finding the thief, and in the process, neglect their child. The paranoia-inducing, heart-quickening stories in Ha's follow-up to the critically acclaimed Flowers of Mold will have you reconsidering your own neighbors.
Author Notes
Ha Seong-nan is the author of five short story collections--including Bluebeard's First Wife and Flowers of Mold --and three novels. Over her career, she's received a number of prestigious awards, such as the Dong-in Literary Award in 1999, Hankook Ilbo Literary Prize in 2000, the Isu Literature Prize in 2004, the Oh Yeong-su Literary Award in 2008, and the Contemporary Literature (Hyundae Munhak) Award in 2009.
Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in Literary Hub , Asia Literary Review , Words Without Borders , and the Korea Times . Her other translations include Han Yujoo's The Impossible Fairy Tale and Ancco's Bad Friends .
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ha's outstanding collection (after Flowers of Mold) delivers heavy doses of guilt, hope, and pain. The opener, "The Star-Shaped Stain," follows a young mother a year after her kindergartner daughter died in a fire along with her 21 classmates while on a school trip. When the woman visits the site two months later with other grieving parents, their wounds are made raw by a drunk storekeeper who claims to have seen a child running away from the burning building. In straightforward prose, Ha's simple, devastating tale sets the mood for what's to come. The title story brilliantly explores the secrets and silence inside the microcosm of an opportunistic marriage, as Ha flips the switch from ordinary domestic descriptions to harrowing violence, the tone perfectly measured in Hong's translation. Other highlights include "Joy to the World," in which a mysterious pregnancy devastates a couple on the verge of marriage; "On That Green, Green Grass," an exploration of obsession wrapped in the enigmatic theft of a family's dog; and "A Quiet Night," in which a couple deals with noisy upstairs neighbors until the woman starts suspecting her husband is behind the neighbors' run of misfortune. Dark, strange, and simultaneously cohesive and diverse, these stories show a superb writer in full force. (June)
Booklist Review
Best-selling Korean author Ha and award-winning Canadian translator Hong are two-for-two at spectacular pairing, repeating the successful partnership of Ha's collection, Flowers of Mold (2019), with another sensational, 11-story collaboration. The titular "Bluebeard's First Wife" features a 31-year-old woman who marries a younger man (under pressure) and follows him to New Zealand to live more alone than not--until she can't. Deception repeats in other standouts: a Seoul policeman's transfer to a remote post gets him trapped in a relationship that never happened in "Flies;" a favorite daughter discovers her father's other family in "O Father"; a woman meets longtime friends she never knew her fiancé had and learns of their disturbing shared past in "Joy to the World." Violence looms in "The Star-Shaped Stain," "Night Poaching" is about what's really being hunted in dark woods, "Dress Shirt" involves a mysterious suicide, "Pinky Finger" dramatizes the perils of taking late-night taxis alone, and in "Daisy Fleabane," a teen narrates her own death. City escapes prove disastrous in "On That Green, Green Grass" when a dognapping begets a kidnapping, and "A Quiet Night" reveals calamities that befall loud upstairs neighbors. Despite a significant body count, Ha's provocative narratives never devolve into the maudlin, showcasing instead sly moments of macabre fascination and startling dark comedy.
Excerpts
Excerpts
"Bluebeard's First Wife" The wardrobe was so heavy the three movers struggled for a long time outside the front door, sweating and catching their breath. I hovered by the entrance, afraid they might chip the corners. All I could do was cry, "up," "down," "left," and "right," which pretty much summed up my English. But whenever the wardrobe tilted or came dangerously close to scraping the doorway, Korean sprang from my mouth. "Josim haseyo!" After repeated maneuvers to get it in the house, my twelve-foot-wide Paulownia wardrobe that had made the long journey from Incheon's port to Wellington, New Zealand, finally occupied one side of our bedroom. The move took half the day, since there were more things shipped from my parents' house than I'd thought. After the men brought in the last box filled with knickknacks like my old journals and high school yearbook, I sat hugging my knees on the corner of our bed and gazed at the wardrobe. I could almost smell the morning air from back home. I could even hear the wind sweeping through the forest. Whenever I heard the wind, lines from a poem I'd read as a child would come to me. Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through. My heart swelled. I'd brought the Paulownia tree, which had stood on the hill behind my childhood home, across thousands of miles to our bedroom in this foreign land. My father, who had been an elementary school teacher, had planted the sapling on the hill behind our house when I'd been born. The Paulownia grows fast and is used to make furniture and musical instruments because the wood doesn't split or warp, but Father wanted to turn it into a wardrobe for me when I got married. The forest behind our home was full of chestnut trees; in order to easily find the Paulownia among the chestnuts, he even had a plaque made. On it was written my name, as well as the date the sapling was planted. The life of my tree was nearly cut short. If things had gone according to plan, I would have married at the early age of twenty-two, before I graduated from university. But as the wedding day approached, both my fiancé and I changed our minds. His short height, which had made him appear only sweet, suddenly struck me as unsightly, and his field of study--astronomy--which seemed to guarantee he'd stay wholesome and romantic, felt all at once like an awfully impractical choice. The wedding gifts our families had exchanged were returned, and all ties were severed. I never heard about him again. And the tree, whose life should have ended when I was twenty-two, was allowed to grow for another ten years before it was chopped down to become a twelve-foot-wide wardrobe. Just as Mother said, a wardrobe was best at twelve feet. The wood grain flowing like a quiet stream in the light, pumpkin-colored timber was lovely. Not a blemish was to be found anywhere. I still remember the moment it was cut down. It resisted stubbornly as the chainsaw dug its teeth into the trunk. The saw spun in place, bending as though it would snap. Woodchips sprayed in all directions. The whine of the saw was deafening, and the air was heavy with the smell of sap. When the thirteen-meter tree, which had grown uninterruptedly for thirty-one years, began to tip over, the people laughed and cried: "Timber!" Inside the wardrobe beneath the hanging space sat three large drawers. Because they were new, they didn't slide out smoothly. I placed my journals and yearbook my mother had been storing for me in the drawers. To be honest, when I first arrived at the Wellington International Airport, I felt both nervous and excited. Staring about like some country bumpkin, I'd hurried after Jason so that I wouldn't lose him. But these drawers will open easily soon enough. By then, this foreign land will have become our children's home. Jason, who had come home late, seemed stupefied by the wardrobe that took up an entire side of our bedroom. "This is what you've been waiting for?" You couldn't exactly say the bulky, pumpkin-colored wardrobe complemented the white wooden house. As I picked up the clothes he tossed onto the bed, I launched into an explanation about the Paulownia. "The first tree you cut down is called a modong. When it re-sprouts from the stump, it's called a jadong. When it re-sprouts again, it's called a sondong. Sondong Paulownia is the best, in terms of quality. I'm going to watch over that tree, and make a wardrobe for our daughter out of the jadong and one for our granddaughter out of the sondong." Of course he didn't understand any of this. Jason had lived in New Zealand since the tenth grade. When I explained everything again, slowly this time, Jason waved his hands in the air, drew his lips together in a small circle, and enunciated, "No thanks." I wasn't sure if "no thanks" referred to children or the wardrobe, but either way, he didn't seem too fond of the wardrobe. Excerpted from Bluebeard's First Wife by Seong-nan Ha All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
